Tony Bon Figlio, a retired firefighter with 21 years of service in New York City’s FDNY, shares a deeply personal journey from his childhood in New York Park to his career in firefighting. Growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood, he worked in a meatpacking plant, where he encountered harsh conditions, dangerous smells, and a gritty, sometimes corrupt environment involving unregulated practices. A pivotal moment came when he took the fire department exam, only to face exclusion due to gender bias and a zero on a physical test, which was later reversed thanks to a federal lawsuit led by pioneering female firefighters. His first fire was initially a routine operation, but a later incident involving a child hidden behind a door in a burning apartment left a lasting emotional scar. He recounts the trauma of discovering the child had died, and how the lack of communication from residents—likely due to an SRO (single-room occupancy) arrangement—exposed systemic failures. Despite the hardships, Tony emphasizes the profound sense of purpose, danger, and pride that defined his career. The story blends personal memory, social history, and the realities of urban firefighting, illustrating how service in high-risk jobs shapes identity, resilience, and empathy. It serves as both a tribute to the bravery of first responders and a reflection on the societal factors that influence public safety.
We've got new merch. The year of the rat hoodies just hit the site. We have them in two colors and they're made from my favorite hoodie template. We also have the winter sale that's happening right now. 20% off some of your favorites. You can get them before they're gone at theovonstore.com. If you get a chance to go there and if not, that is totally great as well. Thank you guys so much for the support. Today's guest is a retired firefighter and a veteran of the FDNY here in New York City, which is where we filmed. He spent 20 years serving with the fire department in the communities of Washington Heights and Queens and bravely served alongside many others during 9/11. I'm very grateful for his time and his service. He is what I would call a legend. Today's guest is Mr. Tony Bon Figlio. Is it too hot in here for you, Tony? No, I feel comfortable. Okay. Yeah, what kind of temperature do you guys operate at? Well, sometimes it's so hot. In the summer when we're out there in like 90 degree weather and you're putting a fire out, it's hot. You lose so much body water. Yeah. Yeah, it's like when you take off your turnout coat and your gear, it's like you fell in a pool. Have you ever started a fire where you had to pee in and by the end you didn't? Oh yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. And then sometimes you're so thirsty. I mean, there were times I was so thirsty from pulling ceilings and the plaster does that I actually would I look up and would take water coming off the drain pipe just straight into my mouth. It's like breathe. Yeah, yeah, it gets cruddy. It gets pretty crummy in there. Oh, that's shitty. 20 years. You are Tony Bon Figlio. Yep. And that's Italian. That's Italian, man. My whole family is from East Harlem. Yeah, we're Italian. Yeah, it's fun, huh? Yeah, grew up in New York Park. My father moved this out of the Bronx and when I was about six. Yeah. And we moved to New York Park. That's like a town on the Queen's Boidaline on the suburbs side. Bring it up New York Park. New York Park went to Herrick's High School. What was it like back then? Oh, it was great. It was like all blue collar workers. Yeah. You know, all the blue collar workers kids. You know, we have bus drivers, cops, firemen, truck drivers. So there's a nice suburb over there. Oh, it was great right over the city line. I mean, I had such a great childhood. We had so much fun running around, you know, doing all kinds of crazy shit back then. Hot rods, motorcycles, mischief, huh? Yeah, mischief, rock and roll rock clubs. Oh, long island rock clubs. Listen to some death leopards and ACDC. Yeah. Well, back then it was twisted sister and you know, we were supposed to go to the clubs and see twisted sister, OBI. There was a bunch of good bands back then. House bands, but they would play, you know, all the covers songs. You had like doors, you had Zeppelin. Oh, yeah. It was awesome. Yeah, that's a beautiful time. You know, I think that's a kind of a time that a lot of people romanticize as well, you know. I think so. I always say that when I die, I hope the heavens like the 70s, man, because that was so awesome. Kick the ass. And you and you were on the FD in life for 20 years? Yeah, 21, 21 years. Yeah. How do you get started? Like, what were you doing before you got in a firefighting? Well, you listen to the twisted sister, you're hanging out with the boys getting in trouble. I did get arrested. I was at Speaks Club once in Lido Beach. And I did get arrested there for had some weed and a couple other things on us. Yeah, we were young. We were. So yeah, we just, and I was going nowhere. I went to college for like, uh, maybe three weeks. Oh, yeah, that's not enough. Farming Dale University went for food technology. I was going to be a meat inspector. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Thank God that didn't happen. Yeah. Hell, yeah. Well, I was working in a meat factory when I was a kid scraping hangar room floors like Paulie and Rocky. You know, I had the white coat on, I'm freezing, scraping the blood and the fat off these floors all day. And what was that like over there? So what kind of meats did they even have going in and out of here? Just big sides of beef, big factory, like hanging rooms, big hanging rooms. And would you be alone in there? We'd be up. There'd be other people butchers coming in, grabbing in meat. It was like a big production place, you know, big time, lots of trucks. They would give all the meat out to all the restaurants and everything. And that was right. And Miniola. Oh, that's pretty cool. And Miniola is that here in New York? Yeah, Miniola is pretty much right by New York Park. Got it. So you're over there. You're in there with the meat, you know, you're in there at night. Rocky hitting the meat. Yeah, I'm sure. That was right around the time. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, there we go. That's what it looked like. Oh, definitely. Everything turned to V left. This came out. Yeah. Bro, you couldn't, you couldn't get something that wouldn't tenderize. It was funny because we were all kids too. And you know, all this meat after the place clothes would be, but we never took an ounce and beat, you know, back then. You got all this beautiful meat. You guys would be like big tubs of flaming yons, all kinds of because it's in their beef room. Yeah. Yeah. And then I had a yo, and so what happened? Yeah, you're in there. Your beat. You guys are punching the meat or whatever. And was that a common, was that kind of a common future in your area? No, it was not at all. I just got a job there with my friends. We're all working there. The whole crew was working. And we were a cleanup crew. So once the butchers were all done, we would come in with these high pressure hoses. And we would just hose this whole place down. Yeah, it was partying. Yeah. And then we'd oil it up with vegetable oil. It was a funny job. Yeah. For what was the vegetable oil for? Just make everything shiny and clean because we had online the inspectors were there. That was the two inspectors every day. And they would inspect everything. So if they didn't get their payola, then they would not go machine down. And then they'd have to rope the whole thing off. And we would have to come in and clean the machine. And then they'd inspect it again. So there's a little bit of kind of a meat, was there kind of a meat mafia kind of going on a little bit of stuff? Yeah. Was it really? Mm-hmm. Wow. It was owned by two Jewish brothers, the college. Yeah. Yeah. So you know something. Something was a flip, you know. And so what makes you get out of there with your friends kind of graduate? Because I ended up working and dude, me and like five of my buddies worked over there at well, I think it was called save a center or something. It was a grocery or windix. He maybe it was called. Dude, one of my buddies would come clock in, go home. And then he would wake up and he'd come clock out, dude. He worked there for like, "Hey, worked there for almost 11 months." Dude, and the rest of us were afraid to do that. So we'd actually be in there working. But we would during like, but it was so much fun as having your front broke. There was nothing better, I think, than that time. If you were either like late years of high school or right out of high school, and you got to work with like your buddies who hadn't gone all like nobody kind of figured it out yet, you got to work with your friends. That's what it was. Saturday morning, we'd all be banged up, you know, from being out drinking all night. We'd just be getting home. And we had to go in Saturday morning to clean the oil the whole place. So those were fun trips. We had oil fights. It gets soaked in oil. Oh God. I think we might pick up a new list and a shaker in this episode. Oh man, we're going to have some good oil fights. Really? We're going to have these big squirt bottles. And then we'd have these 55 gallon drums of oil. What? Yeah. And was seed oil? Yeah, it was vegetable oil. Oh, we wouldn't even do the trucks in the vegetable oil. It looks like they got waxed. What? Yeah, they were all shiny. And what vegetables was it coming out of? I have no idea. Look at vegetable oil. I never even thought about that. What could even have that much oil, maybe an egg plant? What is vegetable they're made of? Vegetables. You think, but what? They squirt them. Vegetables made from the oils, extract from various plant parts like seeds, fruits, nuts, and grains, most commonly soybean, corn, canola, sunflower, and palm. Because that's kind of the oil that everybody's kind of against nowadays, you know? But I guess you guys were just using it to keep stuff shiny. Shiny. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know people used it like that. Yeah, we had these black trucks and they would look all waxed after we would done oil in the mold down. Yeah. Yeah. And it stung too, you know, because it was such a big place and there'd be a lot of like the bones and the fat and you'd had to go into pit sometimes. It's like you would puke. It was so bad smelling. What was the pit? It was kind of like below the pit. Yeah, that's where all the water's drew a drain into it. And every now and then our boss would have to go in there. I'd see him reaching in. He'd have like fat on his glasses and shit. It was gross. Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, no, I didn't want to stay there. God, it was cold. It was cold in there too. And there was freezers there. And the guys that worked in the freezers, you never saw them. They looked like they were from the Antarctic. They had these hoods and these parkers and they big boots. And you'd see them now. And then they were kind of scary. You know, you were a kid. You're like, there's the freezer, man. Yeah. They never came out of the freezer. Yeah, dude. Oh, that's fucking wild. Yeah. Be living in it as hiding from your wife and kids, probably in there. Oh, god. That's when family life's bad. You know, like, I don't care how cold it is. I'll stay in there. Yeah, yeah, that's bad. That's the last job you want is working in a freezer. Yeah. Oh, I think so. That was in the line. And what kind of guys would do? Was it tough guys? Was it Russian? To fucking guys. Yeah. Which is psychos. They got their own toolbox of knives. You know, a big couple of times they would pick you up by your shirt. You know, because we were just the kids. You know, we run it around. Any of them ever get arrested for crimes? Really like that? Like you think we're any of them low - So key like dexter's a kind of that kind of guy? - Yeah, yeah.
- They were low-key, but strange, some of them. - Yeah, that's why. - And then you had the women, they were the packers. - Oh, they were? - Yeah, they would like pack the chickens and all that, and then wrap it and everything. - Women do better gift wrap. - They had like tough women too, they were working. They was like that the voice of the women was a real tough brood. - Oh yeah. - Some go to tattoo a Richard Dan on a smoke. Everybody be out smoking, yeah, you smoke breaks, and the guy would come with the roach coach and call you out for your coffee and shit. - He would? - Yeah, the coffee roach, you know. That roach coach is here and everybody would come. You know what a roach coach is? - Uh-oh. - It's a coffee truck. Back in the day, they would come to factories. - Oh, so it just pulls up and you gotta get your stuff. - And they would be like, all right, the coke guy's here and everybody would be out of a break at their coffee, that allows he don't know whatever he had. - Little bit of a break, yeah, I like that man. Dude, when I was a kindergartener, they had, or I don't know what grade I was in, I wasn't even in a grade, but they, it was nap time or whatever at kindergarten, but they would, I wouldn't sleep, right? I would just keep my eyes open 'cause they had this, they'd bring in this other lady to watch us. - Right. - And I was like kind of curious about us, I would just kind of lay over there. - You were, I'd ball in it. - Yeah, I was kind of eyeballing her, I guess, you know. 'Cause me and my mother are always on the outs. I was shopping around. - Uh-huh. - So, I, I remember like, at a certain point, she'd come over and kind of kick me a little bit and she'd let me go outside and watch her smoke. - Oh, that's funny. - Oh, that was nice, dude. And she had pretty nice hair. She looked a little bit like a man. - Yeah. - But she was definitely, she probably, - What year was that? - Oh, this was probably '84. - '88, early '80s. - God, yeah. - She looked like a fucking man. But, she's like only a third woman I'd ever seen, you know. So, at that point, she was really good looking. - You don't know, yeah. - Yeah, she's beautiful with me, you know. She was down, you know, she was just stunning, dude. But yeah, she'd let me go out there and watch her smoke and she'd complain about stuff. - Oh, that's funny. - God, that was nice. She was just getting a little break, you know. So, that was like, it felt like it was my break. - Right, garden. - Like, oh, we're on break. - Oh, I remember kindergarten, well. - Really? - Oh, yeah, nap time. That was the best snack and nap. And then out to the sandbox and dig a hole in China. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Dig a hole down to a fucking butcher shop. - Yeah, they would always put like a cone in the sand. They'd be like, "Oh, you're almost in China." They'd be like, "Yeah, let's keep digging." - Yeah, yeah, dude. And then some kid would get sand in his eyes and he would look like he was in his Chinese. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that's what I got good, dude. So, yeah, so, take me out. How do you get out of the meat area into the fire? Like, take me out of the freezer and into the fire, man. - Well, I went after that. I went to a plastic mold injection factory job. - Did you-- - Unemployment sent me to-- - Oh, they did? Then we're making body parts? - Oh, no, no. We were making, there was a game called Othello back then. It was like a black and white time, remember that game? - And we were making the chips and we made the colored beads. So, it was all like these plastic mold injectors. - The colored beads, like, were Mario or something? - Yeah, Mario, or people just buy 'em and put their crafts and stuff like that. All, they're like, 100 different colors. - Yeah. - And I could never remember the color after I back-boxed it up. I get ready to send it. - You don't back up. - I'd be like, "Oh, I am a system of a brown green." Oh, I put something down and then the guy would come back. - You can't, baby, you'll be yelling at me. You can't send these out and I'm laughing. And he's like, "What are you laughing about?" I mean, I'm making $3 an hour, so. - Dude, I remember one time, I ate a bunch of mushrooms or whatever after school. And I worked at this mail center, right? My job was to mail out these insurance forms to these different companies around the country. Well, I'm in the mail room, dude. I'm not doing real good. - Oh, I could imagine. - You know, when my body got really hot, so I took all my clothes off and you're, and I mailed my, put all my clothes in a well box, mailed my, mailed on the soul. That's great. - Dude, my first girlfriend, her mom got me that job. Her dad, shut up, Mr. Earl. He was a fire chief, actually. - Oh, really? - Yup. But anyway, I got laid off. And yeah, her mother had to come. Thank God it was a day. It was raining because she let me borrow a raincoat she had so I could go get in my car. - Yeah, wow. - So anyway, we made some tough choices over the years. But I did have a good time. They had a firehouse down there on chopper toolers in New Orleans, and it would be great because the Mardi Gras parades were down there. So we go down there, and the firehouse would be open on days like that, and all the things. - It was been an old firehouse, too. - It was beautiful, yeah. I think bring it right up. It's right down there, off a chopper toolers over there. And that was it right there, the aww. - Oh, I see it. - That's it right there. - I made it into something. - Yeah, they made it into something. - Wow. - But yeah, anyway, it was a great time, man. It was a great time we go over there. Everybody's cooking hot dogs, and just, you know, just having a great time, you know. That was a beautiful time. - Yeah, we had so much fun. - Oh, bad. - So how do you get into there, man? How do you get out? So you're, you're, you're making jewelry and stuff. - Well, the funny part is they sent me to this place called Stonewell Plastics in Minneapolis. And I go in, and I got this little Mexican guy he's doing the interview with me. He's got, it's like middle age, little guy. He's got a little pencil mustache. - Oh, yeah. - So I'm sitting there. I'm 18, you know, and he goes, so what's your name? And I said, Tony, Bonfiglio, he writes it down. He says, and how old are you, Tony? I said, I'm 18, writes it down. He goes, and Tony, oh, you born here? And I said, no, I was born in New Jersey. He starts laughing, oh, oh, you'll do, you'll do, you'll say. And when I went back there, I realized I was the only American in the place. Everybody else was far in it. - Oh, damn. - So you were in there learning Spanish, huh? - Yeah, Spanish. - What languages were they? Yeah, who was-- - It was mostly Spanish. - Yeah? - Yeah, it was some black people, but even then, I didn't understand because some of them from Brooklyn. I had one friend, he would drive me home. I would say, yeah, I'd shake his head, he'd shake his head, and we didn't know what the hell he was saying. - Oh, dude. I still can't understand why he-- - Maybe like, yeah, miss out on the shoe, my damn ball said, I'm not there. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, we're motherfucking on. - Yeah, dude. I ain't look, bro. - I don't know what he said. - It's 40 years later. Something's never changed. And maybe it's for the best, you know? - It'd be, yeah. - So you're in there? Are you just like disin for me? Or how do the winds blow you over to the fire world? - Then I went, my father got me into the printing union, the amalgamated lithographers of America, local one. And I did that for about four years, but I took the fire department test when I was 18. I was 19, like 78. - Was that part of school you had to take it? - No, my neighbor came over, and he came in our back door with an application, Johnny LaLima, thank God Johnny saved my life. Gives me the application. He says, you'll never get rich on this job, but you'll put a roof over your head and food on your table. So I'm sitting down my kitchen table. I'm like, okay, Johnny, thanks, you know? I had no idea it was going to be the biggest career move of my life. - Dude, what, yeah, what made him even come over there and do that, I wonder? - I guess he knew I was going nowhere because he was my neighbor, and they saw us all hanging out all the time, you know? - Yeah. - I figured this could be a fireman, it'd be all right, go. So thank God, I mean, he saved me because, yeah, I was going, the printing union was going south, you know, computers were coming in. - Yeah. - And they weren't printing anymore on these big printing presses, so. So I got that, and then about a year later, I took a physical test, they have to do a written test. The written test, we took in a high school somewhere in Queens. - And was there a lot of people taking those tests at the time? - 40,000. - 40,000 people wanted to be firemen. - Yeah. - Wow. - Because the job I think, and in a lot of ways, it's a very family, like, it's a, like, it's a lineage job. It's like a lot of families do it. - Definitely. - And there's a lot of esteem with it, you know? - Yeah. - Especially at that time, what was it like? Was it a very revered position? Do you even think you could get it? - Get the job? - Yeah. - Yeah, I think, I, you know, because I was 19, I was in great shape, and the physical test is really where they separate everybody. The written test was a joke. I mean, it was like a third grade questions, you know? - Yeah. - Remember any of them or no? - Well, I, you know, I saw the sanitation guy, he was saying about the dirt and the shovel, and that's exactly what it was like. What would you use? A garbage truck, a plow, or a shovel and brew, but ridiculous. If you got your name right, you know what I was it. So I got a 98 on the written test. Probably the highest I ever gotten any test in my life. - But what was the physical part like? Like, take me to that. - I started, my father took me to East New York to an armory in this real shit neighborhood. And he parked it, we parked his Buick regals, like the nicest car my dad ever had. And I bought him these spoke rims for it for his birthday. - It was nice. - So we get there, and he says, here, you take the keys, I'm running for the subway, and you take the car home. I'm like, yeah, you're sure of that. You wanna, yeah, I'm gonna worry about it. I mean, he's an East Harlem guy, so I wasn't too worried about him. So he took off, I go in this armory, it's like, when you get in there, it's the size of a football field. And there's 100 guys, that day that are gonna take the test. And they break you up into like 10 men groups, and you go around all these different stations, and you take different tests. You had to run, one was a mile, one was in a foot wall. You had to jump over the a foot wall. That was like the separator. Like if you didn't get over the a foot wall, you went to the police department. (laughing) Sorry, guys, that's what separated them. - That's what it is, man. Sometimes you gotta separate the beef from the pork, you know? - Well, the funny part is I got a zero on one of them, and if you get a zero on one of those stations, you're done, you're not gonna get, you're not gonna get hired. - Yeah, for sure, which one was you in there? - I had this thing called a ledge walk. They had to put on a turnout code, a helmet, you had to put boots on, you had to put a mask on, and you went up on a balance beam next to a wall, and you had a slide along the wall, like you were shimmying along a ledge, it was called a ledge walk. [BLANK_AUDIO]
me in the longest thing. I'm like, "Why the fuck would I be on a ledge?" I mean, it's just job that crazy. One of my Batman, you're gonna be out on the ledge and I went all the way down. I touched the line. I came all the way back and the woman scoring me says, "You didn't touch the line down there." Uh-uh. I was. I raced all the way back, touched the line. I come back and she ran out of time. I got a zero. I was like, "Ah, that's it. Everything was down the drain." So, come on. You think she just didn't do it correctly? I think, yeah, I don't. I think she was there to knock some of the white guys out because there was too many white guys on the job, which they were complaining about. They wanted women, they wanted minorities. I think they were told because I stepped on the line. She wasn't even anywhere near the line. No. But, you know, it's like everything happens for a reason, you know? Right, right. And so, you get the zero pissed. And so, and there's 10 states that you do fine on the rest of them. You get out of there. You know, you then waiting for your great like you even like, "Yes. So, now, after you get all that done, everybody says they have asked goodbyes. You know, I went back out. Thank God, my father's regal was still there. Yeah. Found that I got in the regal. I found I had a joint in my workout bag. I lit that sucker up. And now I'm driving home. We had no directions back then. So, I'm looking for signs for the L.I.E. and boom, get home. My dad was there. What did you do? I said, "I think I did all right." And so, now it's the girls have a lawsuit because 40 girls took the test. The first 40 girls ever. And they didn't pass with 40,000 applicants. You know, none of them passed. None of them passed. Were some of the women in there on that day? You were there with that 100 people? No, I didn't see any women that day. But we had a couple in my battalion when I got there. So, anyway, they had a lawsuit. And this lawsuit went off for six years. So, from that time I took the test, I didn't get a notice that I was hired for six years. Because it was because of the women, because the lawsuit took so long, they usually hire about 2,500 people off the list. Now, they had to go deep into the list. And because it had zero, I was like 4,300 on the list. So, the women saved me. Thank God. Thank you, girls. I appreciate it. Yeah, because rarely does a complain in women's savior. Oh, she say they saved me that day. Brenda Berkman, right there. Brenda Berkman, everybody knows Brenda pioneering female firefighter. She was the sole name class plaintiff. She was a lawyer. And the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened fire departments in New York to women, firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in 82, she and 40 other women became FD and my firefighters. Was that a, was that a time where like, were people like supportive of the women, were they against the women with that feel like? Did it feel like they were against the women? They were. It was an old male place, you know. Yeah. And you know, I guess a lot of guys, they don't feel like they didn't mind the women that really passed the test. But to just get on because you're a woman, that was not, you know, today now they have girls, you know, they're so much into athletics and stuff. They could pass these tests now. But back then, you know, it wasn't like that. So, some of them, they were just kind of stack in the deck. Like we're just going to put some extra girls in. It's something that's just a liability. That's it. They went, well, yeah, life and death. Yeah, and a liability for their own life. That too, yeah. But I mean, if your kid is trapped in a fire, you know, you want the best person going to get that kid, not, you know, somebody that didn't make it. Yeah, for sure. 100%. I agree with that. But they saved me and I'm the luckiest guy for that. For your own, I'm in. You made it in. Yeah. And do you remember like, like when you do get a letter, it's like, yeah, man, you got it. And is it a flame? My wife, my wife came, I come pulling up in the parking lot from the working at Mastercraft Litho and I had a little chavette. We both shared this little chavette caught at my wife bought on our own when we were kids. And I see it coming across the parking lot with a wave in the, I said, what is it? She goes to fire department watch six years. You bought a father watch. They're gonna hire you. I said, Holy shit, I looked at it. Tony Bump figlio, New York City Fireman, report the Randall's Island 823, something 84. I'll be there. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Oh my God. It's so happy. She was happy. She was happy. I was happy. Where did you and where did you meet your wife, Christine? I met her. I know she's here with us today. Where did you meet your wife at? Well, on my block I was walking up my block in neighborhood. I mean, her sister just moved in from the Bronx. They were in the Marble Hill projects. They were like the last ones out of these projects. So I'm going up the block. I'm like 14 years old. Yeah. They're coming down with one of my friends and he's like, hey, these two girls just moved in from the Bronx, you know, Chris and Bernie. And I'm like, hey, first of all, I was like, thought he was pulling my leg. So that was like, wow, we met. And then, you know, we went through school, we didn't really date until we were like 18. Hey, there we go. That's a great shot. Yeah. Yeah. I was like size 32 waist back then. Hey, look, I'm looking at Christine. Okay. Yeah. She's looking good. Yeah. Yeah. You can say what I'm looking at your waist, buddy. Yeah. We were, you know, we were like 24 years old there. I was just getting out of the academy. That's graduation day. I'm graduated from there at the six weeks of training. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You look pretty pleased. But the funny part is, they give us your assignment. You know, so I get this thing 34 truck. Now, like 155 and only 10 are going to go to trucks. The other 140 are going to go to engine companies. There's an engine company. They're the water. They got the hoses. And then there's the truck. That's the ladders. And the, you know, they break out the doors. The ledge walkers, the ledge walkers. So I didn't want to go to a truck. I was like real. I didn't like the heights. I didn't like the ropes. Yeah. That's when I showed look, I got a zero on the ledge walk. Yeah. You got the wrong guy. So, uh, so and why did they choose you for that then? I have no idea. My father said they saw how good I was at breaking things. Yeah. That they said they send him to the truck. So now I'm going to see a truck and Manhattan. I'm like, oh, man. All right. So I tell her I says, I got it. I'm going to 34 truck. They gave me a truck. She's like, it gave me a truck. I'm like, yeah, because most guys are in the engine for like maybe five, 10 years before they get to a truck. And so in the engine means they're in the actual fire engine. They're in the engine and they they're a separate company. You know, they're engine A4 and we will add a three four. It was a big 100 year old firehouse. And so a ladder, they do different stuff than an engine does. Yeah. The engine puts the fire out. Okay. The ladder opens up, opens up the door, breaks the doors down, opens, cuts the roofs open, makes all the rescues, and the searches. It's a lot more intimidating because you don't have the hose line. You're actually in there crawling around with no water, no water. Maybe a can on your back. Yeah. I was a can man for quite a while. And that's heating up quick, probably. Yeah. So you get in a ladder and where's the ladder at? What's that? 161st Street in Manhattan. And I know for answer, dam A, I'm in a place called Washington, I Washington Heights. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of Dominicans up there. Oh my god. When I got there, they were just coming in. Yeah. And they took over with blood, man. They killed everybody. Really? Oh, they took over the drug business because that was the hub. Yeah. The GW bridge right there, you had all the parkways that had out to North Brooklyn, off out to Long Island. So everybody would come in and buy their crack and their cocaine. Yeah. So it was it was badass. I mean, they would be shooting all day long. Was exciting. It was. Yeah. Oh my god. And the place was so crowded. It was like full of people with these old broken down tenement buildings, brown stones, tenements, all broken down. Hundred years old. The firehouse was a hundred years old. Did you, was it exciting to go work there? Did it feel scary? Like, what, what did it kind of become for? But the funny part I was going to say is that I went with my wife from the graduation. I said, we got to go. It's on 84th Street. I told her. I didn't realize that was 84 engine when I read things. So I take her into Manhattan and I take it down 84th Street and there's no firehouse. I go all the way back up to the west side. I come all the way down. It's no fire. And we're saying, wow, this is nice. Look at this. It's all money, brown stones, high end stores. Finally, I go around 85th Street and I find a firehouse. And I got my uniform on and they tell you to not always knock on the door and say, proberry probation every firefighter on figlio. This old guy answered the door. What can I do for your probi? New right away. I was a probi just by looking at me with that stuff. I said, I'm looking for my firehouse. 34 truck. They said it's on 84th Street. He's like, wow, let me look at that. He's like, dude, you're in with 84 engine and you're on 161th Street. I was like, what? Holy shit. I had to get into car and tell my wife, we got caught. And now we left the glitz and now we're in this freaking run down neighborhood. It was like holy shit. The music's a little bit better. Oh, yeah. A lot of salsa blasting in the streets. It should be known by now that prize picks is America's number one sports picks app and the best place to win cash while watching sports with your eyes. The app is really easy to use. That's what I love about it. You just pick more or less on two plus players and lock your picks in. That's it. That's it. Plus for the big game, prize picks has you hooked up with a max discount on Drake, Drake, May, May. Yep. He needs just one passing yard this Sunday against Seattle to cash in one yard. That's a no brainer. And here's my line up for the big game. Tell me if you want. I'm a novice. You know what that means. Not good. You can even follow my profile on prize picks at the Ovan.
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So you're in there, you're in the ladder. - Truck company, yeah, ladder company. - You're in the truck company. You guys are the ones that go in. So you have more of an axe and you do a hoax. - We got a forcible entry team. - Okay. - A roof man and another guy that's called the OVs to be a events out the outside. He goes up the fire escapes. - Oh yeah, peeping Tom. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the guy, the first guy in the break in the window. - Yeah, we're just sitting there by it. - You know, I always say not that. - So do you guys get there before the, like an engine gets there or is it just, does that work? - Try to get there at the same time. You never know, I mean, if we're leaving quarters together, you know, we always let the engine take off first. Hopefully they go and find the hydrant. Okay, and we try to get in front of the building with the ladder. - Okay, got it. So take me on your first fire. - My first fire. - Well, I've been like car fires, rubbish fires. We had water leaks, so many water leaks. 'Cause it was such an old neighborhood, you know, when we got to a water leak, we got to find out where it's leaking. Sometimes we got to break into the apartment, gas leaks. We did everything. All the utilities up there. So I doing it for about three weeks, and I'm still wondering, oh my God, what's gonna happen? Where the job, am I gonna, what's it gonna be like? I still have no idea, you know, I'm a can man. The probe gets the can. - Okay, and the can means what? - I got a fire extinguisher with a strap on my back, and I got a hook, and I'm gonna be the guy that, if I can put out whatever fire I can with the can. - Oh, is it actually helpful, is the can helpful? - It'll put out a, if a good can man could maybe put out a room of fire. - Okay, okay. - Yeah, you get your finger over that thing, and you spread it around, you know. - So it's real. - It's real, yeah. - Okay, got it. Do you remember the day that you get your first fire? - Yeah, it was like three weeks in, and I'm doing my first 12 by watch, so you have a house watch, you know, and you got a man, somebody's got a manate, it's got a computer in there that comes on and tells you what your alarms are, and you acknowledge them, you hit all the lights, you send the companies out, so I got to do my first 12 by. So I never done a watch alone yet. So the 12 by was like, you know, it was a little scary at first. - And that's 12 hours? - No, I 12 to three, you do three hour watch. - Okay. - So 12 o'clock came, I went in, I took the book over to midnight, and I'm sitting there, and it's like one o'clock in the morning, and all of a sudden, like, 1'30, I stopped falling asleep, and I'm like, sleepin'. Look, I've had a job before, I know how it is. I'm sacked out, and all of a sudden, the alarm goes off, the computer goes tick, you get such ticking out this alarm, I'm like, oh my god, I was so scared. I got up, I hit the house watch light, I'm looking at the ticket, it says, engine A4, ladder three, four, first two, fire on an A4. So now I got to hit all the bunk room lights, I got to hit the intercom, say, everybody goes, I got to hit the three bells, and then I got to acknowledge on the computer, both companies 10-4, and then I got to take the tickets and put them on the truck side and the engine side, and then I put my gear on, and out the door we go. - Let's go, tell me, oh man, though. - Oh man. So now we get there, it's 3'30, quarter to four in the morning, and it's like a project's building about 11 stories. It was pretty decent building, it was on Amsterdam Avenue. And so we're the four-spel entry team, me, my lieutenant, who was this salty guy from the Bronx, Spinelli, he was like a real, I mean, he was the war days, you know, back in the '60s and the '70s. - How salty? - Salty means, you know, like, yeah. - Oh yeah. - Yes, he was salty, but barely mustache on really head. - Gauten is smile on. - He was so bent and burnt, you know? - Yeah, dude, definitely. - Great guy, though, you know. - Yeah, it was like he was raised in an astray. - Oh yeah, oh, this guy, yeah. So there's four-spel entry teams that came in, an Aryan's man, he's got an axe and a halogen, and the boss, and we're the three guys, so now we go into the lobby door, and we hit all the buzzes 3'30 in the morning. - And there's people in there, sleep. - Yeah, no, they're in there. So all of a sudden they start, who is it? Who is it? You know, like, fight apartment, open the door, open the door, fight apartment. So they buzz you in, now they're going to lobby, nothing's showing, nobody's bailing out, you know? So I'm like, yeah, I don't know, so it might not be it. Take an elevator to the seventh floor, or so fire was on the eighth floor. So we get to the seventh floor, and you never take the fire, the elevator to the fire floor, for obvious reasons. So we take it, and we take the stairs to the eighth floor, and we get in this hallway, and now it's like a big project's hallway. I don't know if you ever seen one of them, but they paint the green, and they got like fluorescent lights, and it's long. So we go to all the doors, and we stick our noses in the jams, trying to smell smoke, we don't smell nothing. So the boy says to my friend, Jimmy, to Duke, he says, go up to the next floor, and check it out, calls down the battalion, says, "Yeah, we got nothing showing on the eighth floor. We're gonna check out the ninth floor." So with that, now we go into the hallway, and my friend is on the top of the stairs, and he says, "Lou, I think we got something." So I'm like, "Oh shit, this is it. I'm in this project hallway, I recorded four in the morning. I'm running up the steps with my hook and everything." And there I, and I said, the boy says, "What do we have?" And the Duke opens this door, and I was like, "Oh my God, if there was a gate to hell, this was it, okay?" Black shimmering smoke that looked like satin curtains, just going in all different directions, and my first thought was, "No way we're fucking going in there, right?" I see these guys, "Hey, look, let me see a two-bedroom." Yeah, it's gonna work for us. They're pulling their boots up, and they're putting their air, they're turning their air bottles on, and everything, I'm like, "Oh shit, this is it." So now we're getting down on our hands and knees, and the Duke tells me, "You hold my coat, okay?" And I'm like, "Sure, I'm holding your coat." So you're behind him crawling. I'm behind the Duke, the boy's goes in first, like this black abyss we just crawl into on the floor. What are you all looking for? The fire apartment, we gotta find it. Oh, so this is just the hallway. The hallway. Oh, I saw somebody left the door open. Pull up that hallway you had, Nick, is that the one from the actual building? Oh, this is a general one. Yeah, I know what you're talking about though. It's an arrow hallway. An arrow hallway is long green. Yeah, look at that color, yellowish green. That looked just like that. Oh, god. So now we're on our hands and knees, and I'm got his coat, I got the can on my back, I got my mask on, and we're in total blackness. And I'm crawling down like a hundred feet, and I'm saying in my mask, I'm saying, what the fuck am I doing here? This is fucking crazy. I'm never gonna do this again. I felt so helpless. I'm only gonna do, it's pitch black. We're crawling in a hallway, we never been before. Yeah, dude, oh yeah. So we crawl up and then all of a sudden the Duke stops and he says that we're at the fire door, and I'm like, okay, can't see nothing. Yeah, it almost seems like some kind of sex traffic and a something. They, whatever's got, anyway, whatever's going on, it sounds kind of out of sorts, you know? It's out of sorts. Anyway, so carry on, sorry. So it's something that I never, I'm like, I'm not doing, I'm quitting in the morning. I swear to god, I was quitting. I was like, what are we gonna do in here? Well, yeah. We don't just can't see, I'm on the ground. So finally we crawl in, and I crawl in, and I hear the voice he's up up ahead of us in the apartment already. He says, bring the can in here. So now I crawl past the Duke. I'm on my hands and knees, and about 10 feet up, I see the voice on his knees with a glow of the fire. He goes, you see the fire, it's to the left, and I look in his room on fire. It looks like cotton candy, the flames are like all over the place. And how much is it protecting? How much is your suit protecting you at that point? Not nothing. (laughing) Not even taking off, bro. Yeah, no, they're just coach, you know, to keep your warm, basically. They got your leather helmet on. Keep your warm. And at that point does it kind of take on, do you start to feel a little bit more empowered kind of yourself? No, I felt scared, shit, I just wanted to get out of there and get this fire over with. So now I see him, and he says, do you see the fire? And I look to the left, and I say, yeah, I see the fire. I'm in this mess, you know? And he says, hit it with the can. I got the can, and I'm on my knees, and I go to hit it, and nothing comes out. I hit it again, nothing comes out. I didn't have air in the can. It's like a total fuck up for a pro-beer. You should have put it in there? That's my fuck up. Oh, my first job. So I said to the boy, I got no air in the can. I've used that excuse a lot of times. A lot of times over the years, buddy, I'll tell you that. And I want to apologize to a lot of his women out there. That was my excuse, I got no air in the can, you know? That's a good analogy. I got a letter, if you want. But go on. Full extent. Fuck, you must have been embarrassed, huh? I wasn't embarrassed, but, yeah, I felt like, oh, man, I'm going to catch some shit for this. Yeah, I'm embarrassed.
And you like just make a sound like you're at here? - No. Like. - And it make no sounds, as I could believe it because I mean, you always check the can. You know, you gotta pressurize it, put a little water. So he says, all right, back out to the doorway. So I've had now the fires coming out over our heads in the hallway, and I get to the door we came in crawling. And the elevator was right across from the apartment, fire apartment, and the door opens, and there's 84 engine, without a mask on or anything, they took the elevator to the fire floor, and they got stuck. And they're going down on their knees, and they're trying to put their mask on. And I'm yelling in my mask, I'm like, get the fucking line in here and put the fucking fire screaming. I'm like out of my mind now. So finally, they get in the line now, it's black again. - And the line is the hose? - The hose. And it's all asses and elbows now in this hallway. You know, that's what we call organized confusion. And everybody's sort of bringing the line past me. I see him get up to the room, and the boy says, there's the fire to the left. He crack, I hit the line crack, you know, get the water comes up, he cracks it, and now he hits it, you know, and he starts pushing the fire in, and I squeeze past them because I got to search the apartment, that's my job. - So in your search for it, see if there's anybody in there. - The bodies, yeah. So now I'm searching along the wall and still can't see, and I'd get to a window and I'd smash it out with my hook, and I would stick my head out the window 'cause this is the first time I could see again, since we left that stairwell, you know, - Oh, you gotta get some fresh air. - Fresh air and some view of something. So then I'd go around and then all of a sudden, they knocked it down fast, and I run into the Duke, the Iron Man, he's like, "Yo, Probi, "you broke your cherry man, congratulations." And I was like, "Wow, I took my mask off." It was kind of like still gray smoke and steamy, but it was better than the mask, you know, because that was so confined. So I said, "Yeah, Jimmy, I said my first fire, "but this might be my last fire." I said, "I don't know if I'm doing this again." And then we were, we overhauled the apartment, and we threw the mattress out the window, we took everything out, throw the street down into the street. - And who's down there catching that? He is hitting whoever, that's free. - Back then, like nobody. - Who gives a shit? - Just hopefully nobody's down there. - Yeah, look out, look out! - And then you throw the burning mattress out the window. - Oh shit, upro max, wife upro max, you know? Don't suck, let's take that out, let's take that out. - And then I'm looking out this window and it's encrusted with all these embers and shit, you know, like gold and amber and everything. And it was like 5.30 in the morning, and the Manhattan skyline was turning purple. So I had all this beautiful thing. I was like, "Wow, this is some sight." - Excuse me? - Yeah. - I kissed those guys. - Yeah, it was definitely rock and roll, man. I was like, "Yeah." So now I had to get back and I put the air in the can and when I got back, changed all the mess and everything I had to go up and see the boss, you know? Take my medicine. So I walk up to the truck office and I knock on the door, it's open and he says, "Yeah, come in." And he's wiping his face down with a towel. He just came out of the bathroom. I said, I made like puppy eyes. I said, "Lew, I'm sorry about not having air in the can." And he's like, wiping his face. He goes, "Yeah, don't worry about it. "Kid shit happens." And I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, wow, thank you." I was 23 years old, you know what I'm saying? So now I'm walking out and he goes, "Hey, kid." And I turn around and he goes, "You did a good job." And I was like, "Oh, wow." That's awesome. - Yeah, and then I'm driving home saying, am I quitting this fucking job because it was like, it was like nothing I've ever experienced. And I growing up, I did a lot of crazy things, but this was the scariest thing I ever did, but yet it was so exciting and thrilling. I mean, I got home and the grass was so greener. The sky was so blue and the air that I was breathing was so precious. - And you were alive. - I was alive, man, and it made me, I was like, "Wow, that was something." - Hey. - Of course, that wasn't my last job. I went 21 years more after that, so. - What kind of like made you decide do you just have to go back to work and it just kept me in like that or like? - Yeah, you know, yeah, we were busy truck back then because we had a lot of fires, a lot of occupied fires, which are really, they're a lot more intense than a vacant fire or something like that. You know, you got a lot of people bailing out and sometimes they're trapped, you know, you got to get to them, the truck, that's their job. - You know what someone said, hear you say this and like, thanks so much for your time, Tony, to appreciate it, man. - Oh, thank you for the others, it's like an honor. - Oh, thanks. - Kid me. - Yeah, you guys are pie-in-is, you know? You're the millennial pie-in-is with entertainment these days. I think you changed the whole scene. - Oh, well, I just, I think it's like people, just we got to find more humans that have the best story, you know? - Exactly. - So crazy, we're just like, we're coming in New York and we just get an email from you the other day that you had seen that we put out a thing about, about looking for somebody that works in a fire department and my producer's accent forwards it to me. He's like, can you believe we just, this guy we're gonna be there? I was like, wow. - Wow. - It seems really interesting. - I think it was meant to be. - Hey, I think so too. And I think I was about to say, I think it was meant to be that your first fire didn't have any, nobody was in it. - Yeah. - Because that could have been super scary, huh? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - Take me through like some of the times where there was somebody in there, like how much of a different scenario is that, is the energy different when you get there? Who lets you know if somebody's in there, or do you even know? Like take me through that process of like, right when you get there, and then take me into one of like a fire where it was inhabited. - Well, this one fire where we lost this little girl and that one really hurt me a lot because we got to the apartment and my lieutenant, he was a little Irish guy the bravest guy I've ever met, Lieutenant Maloney. And I would chase him up to the fire of the door, the caller, and he would knock on the door with his little crowbar. Fire department opened the door, you know? It sounded like some cartoon, you know, the Irish broke. So these people opened the doors and we walk in and there's a car table sitting in there and about eight people playing cards, they're eating, we're standing in the kitchen, three of us, and we're like, my lieutenant says, "What the hell did you call the fire department?" So they're looking up, they're like, "Yeah, I think something's burning in the back." And it was a big apartment. So we're like looking at each other, so I'm burning in the back. What the hell is this? So now we go down the hallway, my lieutenant's cursing under his breath, you know, all these Irish motherfuckers, I get fucking shit, it's still playing cards. So now we get in, - It's just fun though, cards can be fun. - They were, but we get into the living room and there's like these French doors, I don't know if you know French doors, probably from. - Is it like that kind of thing? - They're glass paneled and they're like two doors, they open to a room, they're called French doors. - You think there's gonna be somebody French in every frame. - Yeah, no French people. - It never is, dude. - It never is. Typical French, you'll send the doors, we'll be there, they're not. - Typical French. - So anyway, I open the French door and the room is on fire. - Holy shit, close the door. We get down on our knees, it's up putting our masks on, and we call 1075, that means we got to work in fire, he's telling the battalion, you know, the engine now, they're coming up with the line. So right before they got the line, I said, all right guys, it's right here, I put my mask on, I said show time, and I went to open the French doors and I get a call over the handy talkie. There's a kid in the room. My friend, the OV is with the mother out in the street. - Oh. - So now we bust into these doors. They hit and thank God we had the water, hitting them, and I'm frantically looking for this kid, and the darn black smoke, I'm on the bed, I'm feeling all over the bed, I gotta find this kid. - And is it mostly feeling how far can you see? - You don't see anything. - You don't put tape over your eyes, nothing. - And you're feeling with gloves on too. - Yeah, sometimes gloves, sometimes you forget your gloves, but yeah. - What? - Yeah. - Yeah, we were back then, we were like, less equipment better. You wanna get in, you wanna get in, you wanna get out quick too. - No, that sounds like a guy who forgot his equipment. - Ah, yeah, that's, that's all we get there into the can. - Yeah, for some area you can't, Tony. That's always that guy's excuse, you know what? But that's a great attitude to take, like no guys, if there's air in this can, we're gonna have to be here all afternoon. - Yeah, yeah. - We're in an out of control. - I could have probably put that maybe put it out with the can, but anyways. So the engine, I'm in there, I'm going around, and finally I'm going around the wall, like I feel I'm sorry, I'm under the bed feeling around, trying to find this kid, and I get to a window, I break the window out, and I look out the window, and I see my eye and it's man, that was with me. He's in the street with the kid, a limp kid, you know, and they take him to kid, they open the battalion, called door, they go in there and they rush to off the Columbia Presbyterian. - How'd the kid get out? - No, he carried, she was unconscious. - Oh, he found it. - She didn't make it, she didn't, the kid was dead. I'm fortunate she would burnt, they tried to revive her at the hospital, but it didn't work. So I'm overhauled now, and I see my lieutenant, and I said, I just saw Jeff in the street with the kid, he's like, ah, Anthony, the kid was right there behind the door. And I was like, oh, it was crushed, man, I shut that door. I felt like I killed that kid, you know? So we go to Presbyterian, oh, so before we leave, now the deputy shows up, because now we got a 1045, which is a body, and he's like, what happened here? We're in this apartment, people are still playing cards. So my lieutenant says, oh, we came up to the apartment, and I said, I'll tell you what happened, and now the deputy looks at me, you know, I go, you see these motherfuckers over here? I said, they didn't bother to fucking tell us there might be a kid in that back room, and I'm throwing F-bombs at 'em. And the deputy says, Lieutenant, you better control your men. So the boy's puts his hands up.
his arm around my shoulder. He says, "Come on, come on, Anthony. He called me Anthony. That's Anthony in a broke, Anthony. Let's go down to the street, you know? We went down to the street and we went and we picked up my friend Jeff at the hospital. I said, "How'd they make out with the kid?" He said, "They were trying to revive her. They were bringing it to the burn center." So that was the last we heard of. But there's no way you could have known that, right? 'Cause you go in and the kid was hiding behind the door. Oh, I think you'd think somebody would tell us that could be a kid back there. It's heartbreaking. Oh, man. I don't know why they wouldn't let you know what was going on there. I guess there was like an SRO bit or something. They were renting out that little back room to this woman and a child, you know? So, it was pretty bad. And I had a few of those. I mean, right after I got over, was getting over with that one. I got another one where we showed up without our masks on because it was the middle of the day. Yeah, no, I get it. There was nothing showing. We get out and the guy says, "Hey, they're working on the oil burner all day." And we had a lot of oil burners, you know? They would smoke up. So we're like, "I had 10/20," he says on the box, which means all the other companies take your time. Don't blow the red lights and shit. So now we're heading up to the stairs to the call as apartment. It's, you know, the forceful entry team. Me with tenant Clipper and this guy, Jimmy Lynch. And we get to the door and the woman opens the door and we own the apartment. And it's like a slight smoke condition in there, but it's slight. So we're like, "What do we have here?" So my boy says he was a smart fire and he was from rescue, too. He said, "I think we've got something above us." Usually it's below us, you know? But this, I guess, 'cause the smoke was so light. So now we get up, we don't have no masks or nothing. We get to the, I see smoke coming out of the doorway, you know, the locked door in the hallway. So I turn around, I donkey kick the door open, like three kicks, it kicks open. And we got a black wall of smoke. We're like, holy shit. Now we got, after the 10/20, we got to give a 10/75, which means now we have a fire. Oh. So now we're crawling in. No masks. No masks, we're on our bellies. Was it better or worse without a mask in this? Worse, it was worse. Yeah, you could feel the heat? Yeah, you know, back in the day when they didn't wear masks, like in the '60s and the '50s, everything was wooden cotton. Then once the '60s and '70s and everything's vinyl and plastic and it's a whole different smoke, you know? It's poisonous, so it gets you a point, right? Yeah, back then you could suck the cotton and the wood, you know? It was like, yeah, you're smoking a pack of cigarettes. Yeah. You're like, hell, shut up. I wish somebody had a couple of tobacco plants and I'd crawl around for another two minutes. Exactly. That's what it was like. And things would burn slower back then, too, wouldn't they? Well, back then, yeah. But plastics will take off a lot faster. God. So anyway, he crawls in. And we're like, oh, shit, we gotta go in. Jimmy goes in ahead of him and I'm the last guy in. We're almost on our bellies crawling in. And I hear the horrible words. We got bodies. I'm like, oh my God, now we got to give 10.45s. So we had 10.20 that means don't come. Take it easy, get in there. Now we want 10.75, now we got 2.10.45s, two bodies. So with that, I get a body, a little girl come and they pass it back to me. And I cry, like, shimmy out of the apartment. You don't know if she, do you? I don't know any, I can't see nothing yet. I still can't see nothing until I get to the stairwell. I knew I had a kid in my arms. I see it's a little girl, the face is all dark. So now I'm like, oh, shit, I'm going to run it down to the EMS. It's going to take her in the street. And I go running down to the street and there's nobody there. And all the people are screaming, you know, they yelling and screaming. And I'm holding this kid and I'm looking around because we gave the 10.20. We were doing take your time. Nobody there, yeah. They're at the mulch shop. I put the kid down on this CPR on this little girl and I put it down at Cuprahead. And I pretty much all I knew was like a 15 and 2, you know, you get two breaths into her. And then you give a 15. And this went on for like 10 minutes before I got relieved and the sound that she was making when the air would come out. They'd call a machine gun breath because it's like, and the smell because I had the smell of burnt lips. So finally, somebody came over and they started taking over and then the EMS came. After 10 minutes, they let me go. And now I'm like, I'm walking around the sidewalk. All these Dominicans are very emotional. They're all screaming and yelling and crying and everything. Prayin' some of them probably. Prayin' everything. Yeah, for sure. I figured, let me go back up to the floor because my, the other two guys were working on the mother. And when I got the EMS already, we took over and I was like, holy shit. And it was like the first fire we had where the windows didn't break open. They were the new windows that the Gambino crime family put in and all of them had and they didn't break like the old windows. So it never got air. So it's smoldered and they died from the smoke. And that stayed with me for years. I would like, sometimes I would smell and taste the burnt lips and everything and it was horrible. That's heartbreaking. Yeah. They're like, who do you even talk to about that kind of stuff? Do you guys go to some of the services? What is some of that like? I got back in the fire house, the guys were listening up, they knew. I took my turn out code off and I just went in and I took a shower. We all took showers and then the boy says into the office, you know, it's talk about it. So he says, you know, we did everything we could. It really wasn't nothing else we could do. I mean, not having the mass didn't hamper us at all because we still got the bodies. And so then I went home, my wife heard about it already on the news and so when I got home they all greeted me and that was pretty much, you know, all I got was some nice hugs and some tears at home. Yeah. Yeah, you get over it. It takes a while though. I mean, I had a couple of things. I had this junky that we kept called three times. We got called to the sixth floor. He kept light and fire. It's the stay warm in the winter. Yeah. And he was a young black kid, you know, and so we would have to climb up these vacancies stairs. I had to pop a hole in the, in the, in the block walls to get in vacant building and a couple times it's happened. Yeah. Oh, but it's the first one. And we go up six floor dark cold. It's icy. It's about 30 degrees out. And nice kid. I have no idea. I got to the back with my, and I see my Irish lieutenant yelling at him. He's like, what the fuck are you doing? You can't light a fucking fire. And he was sitting there and he was in the corner and I, I came in and I put my flashlight on him. And it was looking at me with these eyes, you know, and I was like, I had like tombstones in his eyes, you know, and he was only about 16, 17. So we put the fire out. We leave two hours later. We get called back again, go up all got to climb these stairs six floors. No steps. Just the risers. And no lights. It's dark. So now we climb all the way up again. We go through the thing. He lit it up again. I said, you know, you can't fucking do this, he's yelling at him and shit. I got the light on him and, and the, and the party powers, we just had, we just sat broken to an entom in his cake at the firehouse with the vanilla icing that we would keep in the fridge, get a nice and stiff. So as my friend Jeff in the dark, he's putting the fire out. I put the light on him. He's still got the vanilla icing on his mustache. So my boy took a piece for the road, Jeff, huh? That's why he's a guy interrupted his deserve all three companies and a battalion are responding every time. And we got chains on. It's snowing. It's not like no. Right. You get a lot to get out there. So the third time I hear we just, we just got back from something. We went in our bunks and we were getting the bunks and we're like a little pillow talk before everybody was sleeping. And then before you know it, being boom, same box here we go again, I hear the bush yelling, "Oh, shit. I'll kill that motherfucker." Let him cook at this point. We're sliding down the poles. This guy's trying to get to heaven. You guys keep. Oh, my God. You guys keep coming in and ruining his trip. Third time. So we're in the rig. And I said to my friend, Jeff, I says, "Let's tell the boys, stay on the, don't even come up the stairs. We'll take care of it." And surprisingly, he agreed. So when we got to the door, I says, "Blue, we'll take care of you. Stay down here." So me and Jeff go up though my leg, my leg, my die-hard battery died on me. So I had like no light left. I'm trying to file Jeff's light and we're going up just on the rises and then there's no platform. So you got to like lean over your step to get on. And when you get to the fifth to sixth floor, you're looking down at this skeleton staircase. What? Yeah. So now we go in, go through the dark apartment again. He's in there again. Now he's got candles burning because we broke his bucket up. He smashed it all up. So we're like, "Holy shit." So now Jeff is like leaning into him and he says, "Listen, you can't fucking do this anymore." And Jeff's like the good cop, you know? I'm the bad cop. So I lean into him. I look at him and he says, "We come back here again. I'm throwing you out that fucking window." And he just looked at me, you know? And that was it. That was the last time we went back. We left there. We took his candles. But years later, I would see that kid's face looking at me and it made me feel so bad, a wasted life like that, you know? Harrowing. He had the works, everything. That's scary. And the fact that he kept going back to do it, it's just that power of addiction, you know? It was cold. Oh. I guess they keep you warm. Yeah. He was in a vacant. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of shit like that. Vacance with disgusting. Is it just anybody can be doing there doing anything, huh? Squatters. Yeah. They're shitting on the floor, they have drugs and needles.
and you're crawling around in there because you still have to save them. - Oh. - Yeah, you have vacant fires. - Yeah, do you start to develop a certain attitude towards humanity or drug users or society? - Absolutely, call them skills, the role of skills. - Yeah. - Tell us back then, you know? And, matter of fact, on my block, we had a tight block, 161st Street, and we had a bodega, a gypsy cab, dispatcher, a whore house, and a bunch of drug apartments. - Yeah. - And it was a busy block, and we had two guys on the block that were almost dead, a whole time I was dead, and they were the lookouts. And one guy was a ball, and we called him a ball. And the other guy always had a hat, and we called him the hat. And the funny part was, they would watch our cause for us, so nobody would break into the cause and shit. But, you know, I mean, I would see every agency, there is, come down and raid our block. Through the years I was there, ATF, Manhattan, Tactical North, CIA, I mean, everything. I tell you who was the worst ones was the FBI. - Yeah. - They come down with machine guns, and I've never seen anybody that, and then they clear the street. They hit all the apartments. It's amazing. - I bet they were all just visiting that whore house. - That whore house. - I would inspect it now, and then I'd go into it with my hat and the day, and they'd all be looking at me, and I'd be like, what the fuck you want? Like, I got to inspect this place, yeah. - What was it like in some of those joints? Was it interesting? And there was just women trying to just survive? Mostly it was just some middle-aged young, not too young, Dominican women. I guess they took care of the cab drivers and stuff, and they had the different rooms. You know, everybody had their little bed in there. - Just trying to survive. - And I would inspect it, you know. - Yeah. - I got you, you got condoms, the condoms are here? - Making sure the alarm works, ladies. - Yeah, they would be like, come on. 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Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/thio. That's betterhelp.com/thio. That would be the wildest thing for me would just be like the access you get to, dude, I'm in one time, I'm in Kansas City, right? And I guess somebody started a fire, right? And as a comedian, you go to different hotels, you're always in hotels over the years. And I got to the point where every now, like every seven weeks somebody started a fire pulling along. And so in the middle of the night, you gotta go downstairs and be outside. So I finally decided for myself, I'm gonna wait 'cause it was never a good fire. Right, right. So I was like, I'm waiting out there for 45 minutes or whatever while they see if there's a fire or not. So I finally said, I'm staying in the room until I smell smoke or whatever. So one time I'm in there, I just made this big sandwich, dude, it was really good. I was one of the better ones I'd probably ever made in my life. And a guy, yeah, I remember this big fire and wind and axe comes in and just opens my door and the alarm had been going off for a while. And he's looking, he's looking for me and I was like, is there a fire? No, I can't. Did I miss something? Yeah, he's like, you gotta get out of here. I was like, bro, every week they doing this shit, I'm not going, right? I mean, it's all the time. But that's the cry wolf thing, too, though, you know? Oh, for sure. I knew it was on me. I was like, hey, if it's bad, come back. Right, right. And I think he's like, fuck you, you know? I don't blame him. Yeah, that's a fireman attitude. Yeah, and it should be. And come back if I'm gonna burn, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's just a lot of pressure. Yeah, like immediately I was putting all the pressure on this guy. But yeah, what were some of the environments you went into? Like, did you ever just walk into an environment? Like, oh, well, this is crazy. You're like, like a drug den or like a, um. Oh, plenty of drug den's. I mean, every building had a drug apartment where they would sell drugs. Oh, yeah. But this one fight that I went to, it was a, it was in the middle of the day. It was like the second floor. We pull up fires blowing out four windows. I mean, it was going good. And so we run out. Now we're second due, which means we go to the floor above the fire. So the first due truck has the fire floor. Second due goes to the floor above, which the floor above is really shitty because that's where the heat's going out. That's where everything's going, you know? So now we get up to staircase and it's starting to bank down and get dark. And I see a guy runs past me, no shirt on, no shoes. He's got like a three year old kid under his arm and a hefty bag. Oh, yes. So a politician probably. So he slips by us, you know? So now we're going to take the door and the hallway above the fire apartment. And it's getting smoky and my boss puts his mask on, but we have to take the door. So I wanted to see a little bit. So I'm hitting the, you know, the guy's got the halogen in the door jam. And I'm smashing it with an axe and he's trying to get a bite on the jam to bust the door open. So finally, we get it. We bust the door open, we put our mask on and we go in and we crawl on around. And the engine company did a good job. They knocked the fire down pretty fast, you know? So as we're crawling around, it's starting the black smoke starting to go away and it's getting lighter. And I'm on the floor and I'm bump into a dresser. I'm like, oh, now I can start to see a little bit. I put my light on the dresser, all the drawers are open, stacks, $150 bills every draw. I mean, no 20s, no tables, all coke money. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my god, you know, I'm still like a, I'm like my one year it is. I'm a junior man, you're like, I got to get something for Christine. Well, that's it. You know, I got an angel and a devil on my shoulders and they're fighting it out. You know, I'm looking at it. We're in smoke. So I mean, it ain't like a set up. Nobody's ever going to notice. So I'm thinking, oh my god, I could buy myself a new holly with that money. And then I was like, the, the angel would be like, oh, you're buying a new holly and you're going to crash and you'll, you'll get paralyzed and I'm like, oh shit, that could happen. Well, now I told the senior man, I said, Eddie, come here, look when the straws bring another guy in. Senior man. You know, holy shit, Tony. He's like, what are we going to do here? Oh, Eddie said you up again. I'm like, you're the senior man. You tell me what this is dirty Tennessee guys. I could have been stacking thousands in my pocket. If Eddie would have been like, hey, let's take a little, you have to. I would. Yeah, you got to. Yeah. I think just to even make sure that it is what it is, get it back home. Right. I, you know, I was young. I had this. Oh, it's dirty money. It'll bring me bad luck. Bad luck. Go ahead. Yeah. You never know. I mean, I think that the car man, who knows? Yeah. You don't know. So the boy walks in, you know, the tenant and he's like, what do you got? And I was like, we got all this drawer full of muddresser, full of my, he's like, oh, I don't see nothing. He was like, I don't know if you ever see shults on Hogan's heroes. He's like, I see nothing. He turns around. He walks away. And I was like, so now we go out and it's still a little smokey, but we could see we don't have a mess on. And there's another room with a padlock on the door. So he's like, take the door. So we put the, the ad's in the hall again and I whack it with the axe. Yeah. The door would bust it open and Theo, I'm telling you, it was like, have to cook him and hat and just in there bricks all the way to the ceiling on all sides of the walls. A pile of cocaine about 18 inches high on the table who were like, holy shit, so the Boyz gets on telepathy and we got a drug apartment.
the PD up. So now we're like waiting for the PD to come. We want it then to come before the drug deal has got back. So finally to to a NYPD guys show up and they're like, "Hey guys, what do you got?" I said, "We're going that room and going that room." I said, "That's the money room. That's the coke room." So they both go in and it's the same thing. They go, "Holy shit, wow." They call a backup. And also now we're like, "My boss is like, we're out of here. We don't want me not in part of this whole show here." Out of stuck around, man, you know? Like Joey Diaz says every now and then you're bumping into a Columbia. I love Joey Diaz the best. He was a fireman in Colorado with some shit. Denver. Was he a fireman? Yeah, but he was selling blow. He said, all they had was a pickup truck. I don't know if you ever saw it. I think it was a rugged baby. Yeah, he said, "Oh, it's just selling. It was an easy way to sell coke." He said, "Go around." People call the fire department. Sorry, Joey, but you did tell that story. No, people call the fire department. He shows up in a pickup truck selling coke. Well, he says it was a ski lodge place. There was never any fire. Oh, yeah. That's a great idea, actually. Yeah, ski lodge, so it was what perfect, Pam. Yes, Joey Diaz has talked many times about having been a volunteer fire fighter, which is really a drug dealer in Aspen, Colorado. In the 1980s. Did you imagine him been doing that? I bet if you were anywhere with Joey in the 1980s, every place was Aspen, Colorado, dude. I go to a restaurant. He recommended in Jersey a Chinese restaurant. He goes, "Oh, he says, "Oh, dude, this is the real deal. This is the Chinese food." Yeah, he talks. For sure. So I go there and the guy's name is Freddie, the Chinese guy. I'm like, "Freddy, Joey Diaz sent me here." He's like, "Oh, yeah, Joey Diaz." He said, "He popular." I said, "Yeah, he's pretty fucking popular." He's like, "Oh, I didn't know." Food was excellent. Thank you, Joey. I love that food. Joey has, it's like, bro, I'd be like, "Dude, my friend died last week in Buffalo, New York." He's like, "Oh, next time you're in Buffalo." It doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter, your friend died. It matters. You got to walk 11 blocks to get this pursuit around. Appreciate it. He's like, the only way you get there is by foot, right? He sounds very along. But dude, he's always got the best food recommendation. He just loves life, man. He just always has a connection. Oh, man, what stories. He's so funny. He's one of them. I love him. Yeah, I don't know anybody like him. But I bet in your line of work, you probably met a lot of guys, not like him, but with similar energies like him. Oh, crazy people. When I got on in '83, we still had Vietnam vets that were in the fire army. Today, it's more college kids. They came out of college and they take the test. Yeah, a lot of guys that want to be in the calendar. It's a whole different thing. Nothing to get the new guys. They're all great in there. But it was a different atmosphere with the vets guys. Plus, back then, they didn't have computers. There was no cameras. It was BC. So you got away with a lot of shit. Today, you're on YouTube. They see you fighting the fire, the old V to roof, man. Yeah, if you're fuck up, a million people are seeing it right there. People in the chat are like, get rid of this guy. What's he waiting for? Why does he go in? Where's the hose line? What's taken him so long? Yeah, dude. That's like comments. You're like, "Caruso's a pussy," you know, like, dude, he just his first day on the job. Absolutely. Dude, that is crazy that that's how it's going to be. Everything's going to be streamed and people will be able to comment at the moment. Yeah, that's a whole bit. And the other day, I was watching the chief had like a some kind of iPad thing or something. And they had a drone in the air. No. And the thing was showing them all the roof, the holes, the fire, the back. It was like a 3D thing. It was like everything changes. Yeah, there's already a real estate agent there. Yeah. Everything changed. Changes. So, you know, when I got on, the guys from the 60s and 70s, they were tough motherfuckers. Because someone may come from like come from war actually. Big time. And this was just another place where they at least had like camaraderie. They had a brotherhood. Exactly. Because it was a paramilitary organization. So, you know, you had your lieutenants and your captains and your chiefs. Did the stress of the job ever affect guys too much? Was there scenarios like that that kind of happened or not really? No, I think most guys love the job. What made you end up kind of loving it? Like what made like what kind of change for you? Like when you look back. The brotherhood. Really? Oh my god. Like family. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's why, you know, I did 15 years in 34 truck from a probi. I did 15 years. I think I left there in 98. But yeah, I mean, I had a lot of friends that I'm still today. You know, we're all together to wives. The kids. The kids are on the job. Some of them are already captains. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's something that's so nice. It's just that that's one thing that's harder. I even noticed about life. Even just like as you get out of times in your life where you're either in school, we have like teams that you're on or like your buddies are always around or in the college. You don't really find a lot of places where there's that much camaraderie anymore. You just don't find it. No, that was it. That was it there. Big time. We'd make the meals. Yeah. See, this is a the two probies are coming off their probation. So when you come off probation, you throw a big party in the firehouse and they all got lobsties and filet mignon's and and they have a big celebration. It's a lot. I remember my my probi meal was a lot of fun. We I came off with another guy, Richie. We both came out of the academy together. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I know all these guys like family, a lot of them aren't aren't even here with us anymore. Really? Oh, yeah. And that picked that's old. A lot of them who's gotten older passed away even or they've passed away. Yeah. Some of them. I don't know. Some of them might even passed away on 9/11. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's a great shot. That's awesome, dude. Yeah. I mean, you could just feel so much excitement there. Oh my god. The fun we would have and the meals that I would make. Really incredible. That's why they kept you around, huh? Oh, I was a good cook. Boy, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first meal I brought in my mother made meatballs and sausage and a whole Sunday gravy. And I bought Gavadil and I brought it all in with the bread and everything and the guys loved it. You know, the Irish guys call it red lead. That was what they called tomato sauce. They made red lead tonight. Yeah. Red lead. They loved it. They were like, man, that was so good. Yeah. But you know what, kid, you got to make it here next time. So I was like, ah, I get it. You got to make the meal in the firehouse. Oh, that's where everybody comes together. Yeah. Because it could be all over the firehouse, but that's where everybody who's chopping this, who's cooking that, who's sauteing things. Yeah. Who's doing the entertainment? The camaraderie. I would put my Louis Primer on the stereo and we would just be going, you know, jump driving well. And I'm just a gigalow and place would be hopping. Yeah. Oh, it's fun. Oh, that's nice. And great meals. About 11 guys would eat it the same. You know, we'd all eat it at the same time. Yeah. And then everybody chips in at the end of the meal because, you know, city doesn't pay for anything. We pay for everything. That's crazy. All our TB, all they get paid for is the firehouse. Everything else we have to buy. Really? Yeah. Is it still that way? Yes. Still that way. Wow. Well, when I was on the job, you, you bought your own turnout coat and you had a helmet. I brought some helmets here too. And the helmet fit perfectly to your head. They made it a mold to your head. So you didn't need a chin strap. It just stayed on there. And then when Giuliani came in as mayor and we had a couple of fires where guys got killed, and he couldn't believe how shabby we looked because we had that nobody fixed their gear. It was nobody gave you new gear. So you, you went years with this gear and it looked like the, the coats were all ripped up and they, you know, we looked, I loved the way it looked. Like the blaze news bears, huh? And all the other fire departments around the country and they already had bunker pants and bunker coats and they had hoods. They had a way. I hated all of that. I hated the bunker pants. I hated the hoods. And so that changed right there from the uniforms and then they gave us a new helmet. Three sizes, small, medium, large. And they had a damn chin strap to hold it on. It was a lot heavier. Well, I hated it. Yeah. But you get charges if you didn't wear it. You know, if you took your old helmet and you got caught with it or you got caught without your bunker pants on because it was like the takeover. You know, it takes a few years before the old time is really given to all the changes. Everything takes a few years to kind of see been. Oh, especially in fire departments, old tradition. Yeah. Yeah, dude. That was one of the nice things even like whenever I would go up my, it was my first girlfriend, her dad, whenever I'd go over there, it would just be nice to see the guys all spending time together, you know? Yeah. And they would know other fire departments around the city. It was just like, there was like definitely, um, it was just kind of secret society that was a little bit, it was a little hidden kind of because you don't really think about the fire department all the time, you know? I didn't. But yeah, but they're right there, dude. Yep. Yep. And they're, and they're the first ones they have to get involved when things get bad. Yeah. You know? Yeah. If it's okay to talk about what, what were, what were things like during 9/11? Like, what was, I mean, I know kind of like what some things were like, but when you look back on it, like, uh, well, I got the, I got off work that morning. I did a 24 hour tour on the 10th. And I just got home and I had a power washing painting business on the site. Oh, yeah. And I had my Dominican help, but waiting for me at home, you know, so I got home. We came in, I'm making coffee, and my wife calls me. She's at work and she says, you see what happened? They fool a plane into the towers. Like, you kiddin' me. I put a little TV on that I had in the kitchen and I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, what happened? The guy have a hot attack that, you know, I thought it was like a single plane that the guy just flew in by accident. Yeah. Some guy fucking just couldn't get get already the only one you didn't.
know as terrorists. So then I take you, we get to the paint store and the guys are all around the counter with a TV and I come in and the guy Tony turns around the, he says, why the fuck is they fucking terrorists, flew planes into the fucking towers and I'm like, holy shit. Now it's the boat tower is going now. I know, you know, it was an attack. So I says, all right, we got to get out of here. I got, I had a paint at Rabbi's house and would be it. So I got this painting truck with ladders, Tony's power washing and paint. I raced them on the way there. I hear the first tower collapses. So I'm like, uh, I'm cursing. I'm like, mother fuck is my Dominican guy. Don't speak English. He doesn't really hear, but he knows something bad. He knows the towers. So now I get another 20 minutes, a 10 minutes later, whatever. And I hear the second tower come down and I was at a light. I put my foot on the break and I just started crying. I was on the, on the steering wheel. Because I knew how many guys just got killed, you know, from this whole deal. Oh, I was crushed. So you, like, yeah, at that point, did you know because you were privy to the information of, or you just knew how it works? It's due to way it works. You know, they, they called in everything once those planes hit, you know, could you have gone back in or you weren't, you weren't even allowed to go in. When? Like at that moment, since you had just gotten off of a shift. No, well, now I'm, I'm re, I, I raced sort of the, the, uh, Rabbi's house, like throw the ladders, the paint. I knock on the Rabbi's door. I says, listen, uh, Rabbi, I'm a fireman from New York City. I, I got to go to the, the trade center. I knew he knew it because I could hear the TV on inside. So he's like, okay, I said, Roberto's going to take care of everything I told Roberto. Listen, I don't know when I'm going to see you again. He's like, no worry, no problem. My boss, I take care. He was such a great guy. So now I'm racing with my van and I'm going in and out of the L. I don't know the elevated train and I'm got to hold my hand on the horn and I'm pedal to the metal and everybody's probably looking like, what the fuck is with that painter? I'm in on the wrong side of traffic. I'm just bleeding like the French connection. I'm in and out of fucking cause. I get to the firehouse and it's chaotic. Everybody's running in. What are we going to do? Who's going? How are we going to get there? One guy said he was taking a focus. My firehouse and how it beach was on a canal. Yeah. So I, my friend Whippa comes in. He's got a suburban and my friend Bobby comes and it was like, I'm going in with my suburban wherever I want to go. I'm leaving now. And were there some guys that did not want to go? Did not want to be involved? No, everybody went. Wow. Yeah. So we grabbed our gear. A lot of guys went to a staging area. They made that mistake because they got stuck at the staging area. We took the, we took my friend suburban right to the pile right there. I mean, we were heading down Woodhaven Boulevard and I'm like, there was no traffic. It was traffic because I mean, you know, the shit hit the fan already. So the whip is driving crazy. My friend, the Whippa. And he, I'm like, whip, don't get anybody killed. There ain't enough people already. You know, slow down a little. So we get to the LIE and the cops have it shut off. The entrance to the Long Island Expressway. So I stick my turnout code out the window and they move the cop cars and they wave us in, you know. That had to feel crazy. It was. Was there some, I mean, obviously there's excitement, probably a ton of adrenaline, fear, adrenaline. What are we going to do when we get there? Right. So we're going to be an ambulance. We're going to take bodies and we're going to rush them to the hospital. That's what we figured. So now we're racing down there and we get to the Midtown tunnel and my friend Whippa is a driver. Man, he's the best. We're doing a hundred and we're going through the Midtown tunnel and it's like a time warp with the lights and the yellow bricks and we're doing a hundred miles an hour. We come out. We head downtown, you know, by the Midtown tunnel. We head down. He takes us right to the rubble and we get out of the car and it's dark like an eclipse and all this stuff is coming down on us, all the paper and the ash. It was dark. That walls was standing still. Did it look something like this? It looked just like that only day. That's a few days a week later or whatever, maybe. But it was dark and we got out of the car. We couldn't breathe. So we had a rip-up t-shirts and we put them around our faces to breathe. And then I noticed there was an old hardware store right across the street with like a glass door. So I grabbed a tire iron. I went over. I smashed the door open and we all went in. We grabbed the ropes and masks and and sledge hammers. But whatever the cops came in behind us, everybody was grabbing shit. So now we start to climb, you know, and it was like the top of the trade center. It was only about six stores. He's high now, you know, and we were climbing and it was nobody around. It was quiet, dark, eerie, and we heard all the past alarms going off that when firemen aren't moving, makes a screechy noise. And you could hear that all around, you know, and there was maybe one or two other firemen. We were the only ones there. And we were going in and out of voids. In and out of voids. Go on, anybody hear us banging on shit and waiting to see if that happens and nobody, nobody finally worked our all the way up to the roof of the trade center, which was Astro turf. And now you could see and it looked like it went off for a mile. And I was like a movie set. It was so crazy. And on one side was the EAB bank, and it was on fire. And they had, excuse me, they had mesh, like the black mesh covering it. And all you saw was the black mesh and the flames coming out. It was like satanic. Oh, it was so creepy. And so now we're climbing all around inside in and out of voids. And we did this for like, maybe about one o'clock. We got there at 11.30. And my friend Bobby says, Tony, my throat's closing up. We got to get water. So I said, we got to get water. We got to head to the street. Now we're coming out. Now it's like one o'clock. People are coming in from everywhere, firemen from cops, firemen, national guard was coming in. So we worked our way to the street. And then we needed water. And there was a guy, a Wall Street guy with expensive suit on covered in cement dust. And he had a bottle of water, you know, like the big bottle and he was going around giving everybody water. And you know, trying to wash their eyes out and shit. And we were just waiting on a turn to get some of that water. And as we were doing that, these four women, they come out of nowhere. They set up two barrels, a piece of plywood. They had one the bread and peanut butter and jelly. And they started making sandwiches out of nowhere. It humbled. And I got a little emotional because it was like, you know, to see all these people coming together, right? At this time, no matter what your race, creed, color, working together. So we passed the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had the water and we went back. But before we got up, a deputy gets up on a car. And he's yells to Webberkin here. You know, and it was like six truck. We just got a call. They trapped. They're in a shift. And we're going to find them. We were like, this is the first time we're here and anybody's alive. We're like, yeah, yeah, we're so we were everybody starts running forget gear. And there's a rescue truck that was crushed. And we ran over to the rescue truck and we started opening up compartments. I grabbed a jackhammer. We grabbed some big biggest jackhammer bits bottles fair. And now we started heading out to look for them. You know, he said a mission. Oh, we're on a mission now. You know, now a look of it. So now another two hours climbing up and down these kind. But meanwhile, building seven, which is the big building everybody talks about was on fire from the moment we got there every floor really burn every floor. And what caused that fire? Just the collapse. You know, I mean, they had the two trade centers. The class was on the front of them. Yeah. There was a lot of buildings on fire. So so now we we're working up and down and I take a fall. I fall into a void. And I fall on my right shoulder. And my Bobby comes running over. He's like, kiddo, you all right. I say, yeah, fucking hurt my shoulder. He helps me up. I take the jackhammer. I throw it into a void. I'm like, fuck this shit. We had no radios. We didn't know if they found anybody or anything. Oh, excuse me. It was almost impossible. It was impossible. Finally, we threw all the shit down because it was a couple hours already climbing again. And when you're climbing up these big, jagged pieces of concrete, scary, in and out, in and out. And we made our way into a, a store, like a high-end store that was maybe three stories up. And we went in through the window because that's up what? High because the rubble was that high. So we crawled into that window. And it was a high-end women's store. And it's dusty and dark. And we're crawling around. I'm looking under all the clothes to see if there's anything we're yelling. Anybody here? Anybody here? Nobody there. So we worked our way back out. And now we went to the Marriott, which was a hotel right there. And we came in one of these big broken windows. It was right there at grounds. It was right around zero, huh? Yeah. And we climbed down the debris into the lobby of the hotel with the only ones there, you know? So we're like, holy shit, look at this place, you know? We're looking around. And it was kind of capped, okay? It was a big lobby. You know, there was ash and broken glass and shit, but it wasn't collapsed. Right. So I said, look over there. I see a fireman sitting at one of those little desks in the lobby. So we go running over. First fireman we're seeing, you know? And he's covered in shit, you know? No helmet. He's like pale white. He's in shock. And he's sitting there. And we're like, holy shit, buddy. You okay? Okay? And he turns and he looks at me and it's one of the young guys that got on rotation. He just left our house and they sent them to Manhattan. We call them monkey man. I'm like, holy shit, monkey. What the fuck? And he just, he looked up at me and he
And he said, "Oh, my guys are dead, they're all dead." And we were like, "Oh, shit." And I'm like kind of rubbing his shoulder. My other guys are like, "Monkey, monkey, y'all right? "You all right, me." He was in shock, you know? So we're like, "Look, monkey, we got to go, man. "You're okay, we're gonna leave you here." And it was funny 'cause the phone was on the table with the little messenger light blinking. It was the weirdest sight, you know? And we left him, we climbed back out, out the window, back onto the debris. It's a long day. Yeah, we were at 9.30 at night from 11.30 in the morning. So we were going along, we found a hose line. Believe it or not, a hose line all the way from the Hudson. And there was a big opening with a void that had black smoke was pouring out of it. So we had the line. And for about an hour and a half, we just sat there. We're building seven, about 100 yards away from us burning. And we sat there, one guy would go around through the voids and the other two guys would just hold the hose line, pouring it into this hole from hell. I mean, it was like, it was horrible. So all of a sudden we're doing that and we see this chief. And he says, he starts yelling at us. He's between us and building seven. And he says, "Drop that line, get outta here. "This building's gonna come down." So we were like, "Oh shit, okay. "We cracked it open a little, wedged it into the some rock." So the water would keep going down the hole. And we took off and we were like, "Hey, it was like five o'clock." We're like, we're hungry, we're thirsty, we're tired, we're covered in shit. Let's go back to the rig, his suburban. And we'll go up town and we'll get something to eat and then we'll come back. So we get off the pile like, where's the car? I think it's just a few blocks this way. So now we head and down and there's nobody around still. I mean, as far as, you know, besides firing and coming in. So I don't know if you ever heard of Penny Crone, but she was like a popular reporter on Fox News. She was a real tough girl. She was, yeah, Penny Crone. And I don't know if she was Fox, but there she is. It's very well-known New York reporter. She was out there on the street. She was in the street when we were walking and she had a microphone and a cameraman. She came running up to us. She's like, "Guys, guys, can you give me some information "what's like down there?" So the three of us are standing there and she puts this big microphone in front of me and she goes, "Can you tell me?" I said, "Oh, it's bad, really bad." And she's put it in front of my other friend, Bobby. Baddy says horrible. My other friend says the same thing. She's getting nothing out of it. She's like, "She pulls back, you know, "to ask us another question." And I'm like, "Holy shit, look over there." And there's this Asian woman covered and dirt bleeding from her head and she's got a suitcase in her hand. So we're like, "We run over to her." We're like, "Man, man, are you okay?" She was in shock or whatever. And she just kept like, "Look in. "My friend went to take the suitcase." She yanked it back, you know? And then she just walked away and we were like, "Holy shit, that was weird." What do you think's in that suitcase? My friend said, "Money." And like, she had to grip on that day. It was full of money. - Batcha Yen in there, I bet. - Yeah, a lot of Yen, wow. - Some egg rolls, I don't know. But we got to the suburban and it was covered. Now it was grew green. It was now gray. So we go all get in and it was like the other seats, the leather seats were like, "Oh." We're squishing our backs in. We were getting comfortable. I was almost 40 at that time. - I can't even imagine. And the fact is, you're alive. Like, you've been through that. I can't even imagine like, what's your body's going through? - Oh, we were covered in shit. And so it was funny because he put the car on and he started up and he put the air conditioner on and a blue smoke, a blue dust status. Like, Lily Munster's vacuum cleaner. I think, "Oh, I'm like, oh, everybody's getting a choke "in the things blowing smoke out all the dust." Well, like, thanks, we needed that. Now we're heading up town even with the windows open. The dust is flying off the rig. And we go up to 16 truck up in Midtown somewhere and we take a break. I go in, we get a drink of water, I call my wife. - What is she thinking? - I don't know. It's like, you know, 5.30. Oh, I forgot to say, before we got to the car, building seven collapsed. - Oh, we just missed it. We heard a roar. My friends said seven just came down. So we were like, holy shit, we just missed it. - But you've been near that all day down there. - All day, it was burning. - 'Cause there's a lot of speculation about building seven over the years. - I think it's all bullshit. - You do? - 'Cause I was there, yeah, I mean, it kind of gets me a little hurt. 'Cause I don't know what really happened that day. No, who knows, who was involved, whatever. I have no idea. But all I know is building seven was burning all day long from first floor to the top floor, every window. So people are saying it was explosions. - But you saw firsthand that it had been kind of cooked. - And all the firemen that I ever talked to, that were there that day, no one, everybody says there was no fucking explosions. - Yeah. - And they have all these things. Like the other day, I thought I saw an AI bullshit thing about guys saying they heard explosions. Like they're putting that out on the internet. And it looks real. You think they're really firemen. You gotta be careful today. You never know what's real. - Oh yeah, I agree with that. You can't tell. - You can almost tell a little bit today, but imagine a few years from now with the AI, you'll never be able to tell. You'll need like an AI detection kit. - They probably will have that. - Maybe we can get in on that. We could come up with it first. - Yeah. - Okay. - That, I mean, if that's what we met for today to be able to start that and like keep that out of the world. - Yeah, that could save the world. - What about over time with 9/11? There's been a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff like that. Has any of that grown in the world of the fire department culture or anything like that? Or is it person by person? Or 'cause you guys are one of the most affected groups, you know? - At 343 men, we lost that day. - Wow. - And it's hard to even get over that number. Yeah, it was a lot and we knew it was a lot. When we left 16 truck, we stopped at a Genevieve drug store and somewhere in Manhattan and we went in and we got a couple of bottles of water, about four giant Milky Way's and some batteries for our flashlights. So now we're covered in shit, you know, we're up at the counter and the young girls ringing us up and she goes, "You guys come from the trade center?" So my friend Bobby says, "Well, it gives you that idea." So she just looked and grinned, "No charge for you guys." So we took off, we ate our Milky Way's, we had our water and then we went back to the pile. - Is there a picture from that day, Nick? Do you have it? If you have it, just pull it up. Don't even wait for me to see that. - That's my two buddies. That was like a couple of weeks later. - That's weapon, the other guy? - That's my friend Andrew and Marty. - That's back, you know, you would have to go down and work at the trade center. - Yeah. - And it was very unhealthy. A lot of guys got cancer, a lot of guys died after the trade center. - We just had a breathing expert in the other day, this guy James Nester, and he has a New York Times best seller, a book called Breath. And he talks about, is it ground zero? - Ground zero. - Ground zero, lung? - Ground glass lung. - Ground, oh okay. - He talks about ground glass lung. - Yeah, the glass. A condition that happened to a lot of people who were first responders at ground zero. Have you heard about this? - Yeah. Well, I'd never heard about the ground glass, but of course the breathing, everybody was in, you know. You, if you were there for like a month or two, some guys were there two, three, four months. My friend Bobby was there the whole time, you know. He just got his nephew on the job. It was his nephew's first job and he was in the show. He was there every day looking for his body, day and night. - Looking for his nephew? - nephew, yeah. - For his sister. Yeah, it was. - God, that's heartbreaking, huh? - Yeah, he's a good guy. He's a great guy too. - Who is nephew? - No, my friend Bobby, this is his, he's the boxing. He runs the, you know, you fight apartment boxing. - He is, bring him up. Let's get a picture of him. - Bobby, you see him on there. Bobby McWire, FDNY boxing. He's in a golden glove champ. - Is he a pretty interesting guy? - Oh, you wouldn't, I don't know if you know the Knicks, but his uncle's a Dickie McWire and Al McWire and Marquette and their Knicks, yeah. - Oh, there he is. - His father was John McWire and he was like a big guy in New York, Jimmy Brezzlin, actually called him the King of Queens because he opened the first gay bar in Queens back in the day. - Oh, that's incredible, man. Oh, yeah. - He sounds like an interesting guy. - He's a great guy, yeah. - I bet he's got some great stories too, just from the boxing history of it. You know, Joey Diaz used to, he used to shovel ice out of James Day Braddock's driveway over in Jersey. - Yeah, yeah, I heard him say that. - That's pretty wild. - He'd give him side up, like a couple of bucks. - Yeah, give him a couple of bucks. And Joey was like, this guy's been punched in the head so many times, he thought he'd give me a five in a 10. So, but that's just a wild story right now. - Yeah, yeah. - Oh, go back and show the guys. That's Marty right there. - That's Bobby. - That's Bobby McGuire. - Bobby McGuire. And what was his, his nephew's name, do you remember? - No, I don't remember. My wife, my brother, I don't know. - Alan. - Right. - Alan. - He was a, a lifeguard and rockaway to kid. - His last name was Alan, and he just started on the arm. - He just started, was like his first job. And Bobby was there, and now his breathing is, you know, he's had a lot of breathing problems. I want you there too long. So anyway, they're having a fight in the Madison Square Garden in March, we fight the cops every year. - Yeah. - It's called the Battle of the Badges. - Who's won over time, over the years, who's won the most, do you think? - Well, you know, the cops are double the amount of pool that they can get. They're twice as big an organization as us. You know, we're like, we're like 30,000. They're like 60,000. But we still, we get, we get some good fighters and we beat them quite a few times. We fight, they fight everywhere.
They fight in England, they fight in Ireland. - Oh really? - They had a fight any fight apartment, any cops. - So Bobby and his gang, they kind of, this is like a thing they do all year. - All year, yeah, all year so busy. - So he runs this the FDNY Boxing Club. - Yeah. - Oh wow. - They raise like hundreds of thousands for tunnels to towers every year. - And what is tunnels to towers? - That's with the like World Trade Center foundation where the guys brother ran through from Staten Island, he ran through the tunnel to get to the Trade Center and he passed away. And so they started this organization and it's huge. - Oh, that's beautiful man. We'll make a donation to him. - Oh, that'd be great. - Yeah, right here, born from the tragedy 9/11, the Tunnels to Towers Foundation carries out. It's mission to do good by providing mortgage free homes to gold star and fallen first responder families with the young children and building, especially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. Wow. - They ran through the tunnel with their gear on to get to Manhattan. - Oh, the FDNY Boxing Club is comprised of active duty members FDNY and EMS who trained on their own time established in 1982. FDNY Boxing has spent 40 years raising funds for worthwhile charities through spirited competition. Yeah, man, we'll make a donation to them. - Yeah, I'm going. - Braveest Boxing team will defend the big apple on the second international battle at a badges, huh? - The funny thing is the best fights are in the crowd. The cops and the firemen going at it. Holy shit, the brawls. One time I was there in this girl cop, she was bad-mouthed and some firemen and she threw a sorter at the guy and the one fireman says, "Hey, I don't hit firemen." The other fireman said, "I do." And he clocked her. Boom, she went flying over the thing. The whole fight broke out. It was crazy. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you want your throw a sorter at you? - Yeah. - And with all the people getting sex changes now, you don't know who's got what on them. - Exactly. - You know, I'm not frisking your first time on that. - Yeah, what are you packing? (laughing) How has the department changed since you got involved in now? - Well, from when I was got on and then in like in the early, late '90s, mid '90s computers came in and that changed a lot in computers. Now, digital things, we had fax machines and computers. And that changed a lot of things for. It was just writing in a book, you know. Now more things are more digital. So they had a little more eyes on you, you know. You couldn't get away with it as much. - Right, a more technology stuff. - Yeah, 'cause back in the day, you know, the boys ran the firehouse. There was nobody else that knew what was going on. Whatever they put in the book is what it was. (laughing) In fact, when I bought my house, it was a funny story. I was 24. And I told my boys, I told the bank, yeah, this is where I work if you want to check on my employment. And I gave them the number to the truck office. - Yeah. - So I said, this is what I make, you know, and I was like twice what I was making. He's like, ah, you can't say that. I said, just tell the bank, don't worry about it. And it worked. - What? Yeah, what did Christine say when you called her that? And that's been crazy. - Oh yeah, well, her sister answered the phone, Bernie. And I was like, Bernie, and she's like, Tony, how the fuck are you, what's going on? I said, oh my God, we just got a firehouse. We're taking a break and we're all okay. And I'll talk to my wife, tell her, you know, I love her. And I'll see you in a bit. I'll call her later. So hung up, we went back to the pile. So now we get back on the pile. It's like, what do we want? First, we're walking along. And guys are like seeing other guys that you know you're hugging. So my friend Bobby sees a guy they're hugging. And I'm standing there like on a plateau. And a guy hits me another fire and he goes, buddy, you're standing on somebody. And I was like, oh shit. And I looked down and this guy in this three-piece suit. He's like part of the ground. He's looking up at me and I'm like, oh my God. That was the first body I saw her all day. - Ah. - Yeah, so now we're like, okay. So now we're moving along. What do you want to do? They started a bucket brigade. I don't know, we must add 1,000 home depot buckets. And you would pass a bucket and take a bucket. Pass a bucket. For like hours, we were doing that. You know, and it was start Asian. Yeah, it was getting dark alley out. It's the day was getting. It was like around 7.38 o'clock. And so now we're doing this for hours. My back is killing me. And all of a sudden we hear all this yelling. Everybody's yelling and cheering. It's 9.30 at night, you know, at 9 o'clock. I'm like, what is that? What is that? My friend Bobby goes, look, look over there down there. We look down and here comes a parade of iron workers with heavy machinery, cranes. They got their hard hats on, cut off shirts. Everybody's got their fists in the air. They're all hanging off the machines. Everybody's cheering. Like we won the Super Bowl. It was like, it was a drop in the bucket, but they got right to work. Start taking off all the heavy shit. You know, I mean, it had months, almost a year to go, but it was just a start. Yeah. And it just felt so good. Like we had a chance. Yeah, and then finally we were like, you know, what started heading home, you know, and I met a few guys heading home and I was thinking in the back of my mind, all the guys, you know, that got killed. We had no idea how many yet. Can you imagine? And I run into a friend of mine and he was off in a rescue company and I said, hey, John, Tony, how you doing? He goes, you know, Tony, Jerry was working. Jerry was like one of my best friends. And I was like, oh God, I just like step back. As I know, he was, he was in rescue one. I was devastated. My friend whips or any, put his arm around me. He said, come on, who knew? Let's go. Let's leave. And I was like, oh, I was, I'm still motion over. It's heartbreaking. Who was his name, Jerry, what? Jerry Nevin's. Jerry Nevin's. We'll see a picture of him, huh? Funny story when he told me he was going to leave to go to rescue. I was like, you motherfucker. Are you fucking kidding me? He was like, it's everybody was leaving. And I was there 15 years. I was losing guys left them right there. We were getting made, lieutenant. He wanted to go to a rescue company. And we used to bash rescue all the time. Rescue's like a special company, you know, and when a trucky or a fireman gets in trouble, they send a rescue guy to get him. They're like expertise. They're like the Marines or whatever kind of, no, well, the Marines, but they're like specialists. Is that Jerry? Yeah, that's Jerry. Oh, there he is. And they were on 42nd Street, rescue one. So they're right in the middle of Times Square. Oh, they were there. Oh, he made so many rescues. It was amazing. Awesome. He enjoyed it once he got over there. Oh, I used to go to some metal days and he'd be there and, you know, two, three metals, you know, hanging off of buildings, scaffolding, he'd say, you know, was oftentimes a midtown. The scaffoldings would break and they'd have to go over ropes and get these guys. And yeah, he was just a great find. But when he told me he was going to rescue, I was crushed. I was like, you got to be kidding me. He told me in the middle of a box, we were checking out a building. So now I get back in the rig. And we're going down the St. Nicholas having you and I turned the ladder all the way out. So now it looks like a square, you know, and I'm like, this way looking at him. He's looking. He's like, what the fuck? I'm like, fuck you. And we straighten it out. Now we're crossing over Amsterdam Avenue. And I see them put the lights on like, okay, we're getting a run. I see the boys on the phone, you know, and he's taking down the information, puts his arm out. Like, we got to run. It sounds like a job. It's numerous calls means you're going to work. That means people are calling, you know, I see a fire. I see a fire. I see a fire. Right. It's just some weird. I'm just going to Ouija board. Yeah. No Ouija boards, no fake alarms. You hear numerous calls, you know, you're going to work. So now we go around Broadway and I see it. We come up and it's a second floor. It's blowing out like four windows. And there's an awning with off the fire escape on the second floor and it's still not fire out. I got to get in there. I'm the OV. So now I'm getting a ladder out. I put in a ladder up to Dominican guys in the street to help me place the ladder into the thing. I climb up the ladder. I smash the window out. I put my mask on and I drop in. Now it's blowing all the other rooms. This room is getting ready to blow, you know, it gets hot. So now I'm in there and I'm searching around and I get lost. I get a little, I get pumped into a pure on my knees and I get disorientated and I'm getting scared because my ears are starting to burn. I know it's going to light up. So which is crazy. I got caught in a closet. You never think I'd get caught in a closet, right? But I'm crawling in thinking it's an opening and I turned in there and I'm in this closet. Now I can't get out of the closet. I'm going around in a circle. My ears are burning and all of a sudden I hear Jerry. He came in behind me and Jerry had a bite bar which was like totally legal instead of having a mask with a net on. It was like it had a little bite bar in the mask so you didn't need that. You just held it with your teeth, which was totally outlawed but it made it easier to take it on and off. So I hear him say Tony and I'm like, Jerry, he's like, he got to get out of here. It's going to light up. I'm like, I can't find my way out. I was like taking my mask off, calling for my mother. I thought I was, I was a dead man. And then all of a sudden I heard the engine at the door and I heard this guy McCarty yelling, kick it's ass, kick it's ass, hit it, hit it. I heard the water coming in and I was like, it was music to my ears. I was going to live again. And then after that when I was in the street I was like a zombie and Jerry was like, what the fuck is wrong with you? I said, dude, I was fucking close. He just laughed, but that was it. He went to rescue the next day. I never even thanked him for coming in after me that day. Oh.
Man, yeah, I mean, it's just even the stories are so like exhilarating. I can imagine, like, I can't even imagine what it's like, really. We were putting a fire out and I made a cover of a magazine, I think you could bring it up. It was called Fire Command. I didn't know what it was. You know, it was like one of these buff magazines. Yeah, that's me in the middle in a net price. Yeah. I look like an Italian-organ grinded monkey man, right with it. I thought you were going to send me and he made the calendar. Like, I got the little ringlets in my hair, I got the bow ties on and the friend next to me, Kenny, he was a proby. So funny story, we had to take this line up the fire escape because we got called in as an extra engine. There was a lot of fire people would trap, they were having a hard time putting the fire out from the inside. So we're taking the line up the fire. Now I'm in the engine. I'm detailed. I'm never a holly in the engine, so when they need a guy and you got an extra guy, you go across the floor. He's now in the engine and we're taking this line up the fire escape to the fifth floor. And the boys is yelling this boy, but there's Joe McLaughlin, he's yelling, "Richie, get in there, hit it, hit it." Finally, we get a charge to the line. We tie it off to the fire escape. I mean, it's a lot of water going up that high. He's hitting the water, the guy right here, Richie, that's squinting his ice and he's hitting the water and we're pushing our way in. We made it up to the fire floor escape. We pushed the fire in and now we're crawling in, we're climbing in through the window, the boys is yelling, "They're looking at us, Richie, they're looking at us because we're outside on the fire escape." We get in, the ceiling comes down on our heads, all this hot plaster and shit's fucking burn my neck. So now we're getting in, we get to the engine on the other side, it's coming in and making a good push. They're putting the fire out, we're putting the fire out. So now we're at this wall with a window and I'm on top of something, me and another guy. And Neil and I thought it was a pillow from the couch. So the boys tell us the pro, we take the line and shoot the water out the window and it'll take a lot of smoke so we can start to see what's going on here. And as they're doing now, you can start to see a little, the boys takes his mask off and he goes, "Holy shit, look what you're kneeling on." I looked down and we're kneeling on a corpse with no head, no legs and no arms and he's all like a crispy burnt. We're like, "Ah, we all jump off like holy shit." I thought it was a couch piece, you know, it was this, that's what happened. They killed this guy, they cut him up and then they lit him on, they lit the place on fire. That's why it's so much fire. You get a lot of fire in the middle of the day, it's usually arson, somebody poured gasoline or something. Yeah. That was a murder, huh? It was a murder. So anyway, before that, Kenny's a pro, he's probably about 21 years old and he was in softball and he heard his legs sliding in the second base. So we were on inspection, I said, "Kenny, what happened to your leg?" He said, "Oh, I caught it on softball." I said, "Oh, that looks fucking terrible." Then we got that run that of fire. So now we're leaving the fire, we're going down to steps, I said, "We're all going sick. We're tapping out, right?" So I said, "We're going to go with our necks from the ceiling, coming down." I said, "Kenny, take that bandage off and tell him you got burnt on your leg, right?" So we get in the street, the street's busy, it's all fire department cops, there's reporters in the street and everything, and the fire department doctor comes running over to us and I said, "Yeah, the ceiling came down on our heads," and he's like, "Oh," and I said, "And this guy got burned on his leg." And he looked, he closed Kenny's leg up, he looks at the softball injury and he goes, "Third degree burns, patch this man right up." So I look at Kenny, because he didn't know, he was his first take. So now they take us, we're on the wall, like on Malcolm X Boulevard and they take us to, we say, "Where's the boss? We don't know what Joe McLaughlin is." So we see a bunch of people like standing around, somebody's on the ground that take them pictures, we go over there and we see the boss, he's on the stretcher, getting his head taped down, and they're all taking pictures of him, we're like, "Lew, Lew, you okay, you okay?" And he looks up, he goes, "Get the fuck out of my pictures," he says, he's like, "He's okay." So they put us in the bus, there he is, the best Joe McLaughlin, CPO Joe, he was, you know, he was in the 17th truck in the Bronx in the war years, so he was like, he was a well-rounded fireman at Tuffer's Nails. Wow. Yeah, so he says, "Get the fuck out of my pictures." So we're laughing, everybody's taking pictures of him. So now they take us to the hospital, you know, so we're in the emergency room in Columbia press, and the young nurses are patching up on, and they're laughing with us, you know, and it's a busy emergency room, and Kenny's got his thing on, and so all of a sudden it's like middle-aged head nurse comes in, you know, a good looking woman, probably 40 or so. So she goes to Kenny's leg and she moves the bandage, she makes a face, you know, and she's like, "When did this happen?" And the kid he's sitting there, he's like, "Oh, we're all looking out of laughing, you know?" And she just like patches it up, she goes, "You lucky we love you guys," and we're like, "Oh, we love you too, you know," busted. So about a week or two, a couple of weeks later, I come into the firehouse and this guy says, "Hey, he's one of the superstars." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He's like, "You made the cover of a magazine." So I'm like, "Holy shit, you're kidding." So now I go into kitchen and everybody's clapping and everything. They already have the picture in a frame, right? But they changed it from report on firefighters injuries. They put report on firefighters faking injuries. So they put captions on everybody. So you see the woman with her arms crossed in the bandana, her caption said, "I know those motherfuckers are faking." And then there's a cop like walking here and he goes, "Yeah, chief, I got those fakers right here." And then this salty Harlem fireman he's looking at us and his thing says, "You guys disgust me." Look at that said face. Oh my god, that wringled hair. I love how you guys already have your neck braces on. You get the braces on. Oh yeah, I kept that in my back pocket. Well, we had a crop closet at home, you know, cans and braces. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. So that was that. We made that cover. Let's still have that hanging today. Oh, it's just, just yet to go down to some memory lane, man, does it think about different things? You could hear about the camaraderie of what like the lifestyle was like. Break up the part about the ground glass lung, you know what it's called? I just wanted to make sure that we, that I mentioned it on here so that people know about it. Let me see. Ground glass lungs refers to a radiological finding on CT scans showing hazy opacities and the lungs often linked to inflammation or fibrosis from inhaling toxic dust at ground zero. After the 9/11 attacks, the dust cloud contained over 2,500 contaminants, 50% construction to breathe, 40% glass fibers, 9% cellulose, inhaling a dust led to world trade center lung injury, which with firefighters losing up to 12 years of lung function, 70% of workers said respiratory decline. And along you worked down there to where it was. Yeah. Because the dust really never settled for you for months. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's so crazy to think that it created a new disease. Yeah. You know, probably. Well, you know, think about all those offices, all those fluorescent lights, all those computers or they just got pulverized to a dust. That's why everybody was covered in between that and this cement. It's a lot. Yeah. Tony, yeah. There's so many more things I want to talk to you about. Maybe we could have come back sometime anytime and talk about other stuff. You know, maybe I'll bring Bobby McGuire with me. Very interesting man. Is he? Oh my God. Uh, no, he seems very interesting and I want to get a pitch up too. Is this his, is this all Richard Allen? Is this? Yeah. That's his nephew. That's his nephew right there. Yeah. Yeah. It's his son of Richie Allen. Yeah. That's awesome. And we love to maybe get every year to acknowledge him and rock away. They have a big thing with the lifeguards and everybody. Oh, they do. Surf. He was a big surfer. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh. There's plenty more stories there. What was the murder? That was a good story. Well, you know what? I think I want to save it because there's, there's even some basic, there's like basic questions like, uh, like is our can't, like somebody leaving a candle on. Is that like the number one cause of a house fire? Um, um, maybe house fires, uh, probably, uh, bad electrical work in a lot of off fires. Arson. Yeah. Big time. Uh, those space heaters, space heaters. I don't know if you ever heard of the Happy Land Social Club. I don't know. Yeah. It depends on which one you're talking about. Well, it's in the Bronx. Yeah. Wasn't that kind of happening? Well, it is a lot of different. Well, uh, sad story, but I think like, uh, I'm not sure the number, but about, you could look it up. 87 people died from a gown, a gas and a match. Oh. Yeah, it was horrible. You had a respond to that? I didn't respond. But my friend Sully did. Sully was detailed out to the Bronx and they were one of the first truck stare. And when they got in, they were crawling up the stairs and they didn't know what they were crawling over. And then when they finally found out it was all bodies, so it was like, crazy. You had a Happy Land. And so a lot of times you don't know what's going on or it used to be. You didn't know what's going on till you got in there. No. Probably not. You don't know who, who's, who said it? You're just, you're just the adrenaline is running, man. Oh my God, your heart's a pump and I thought you'd never get, it never gets like old, you know? Oh my God. How many years like they would say we'd get there and be a top floor fire. Now you got to carry that mask all year, gear, everything. By the time you get to that six floor and you got to put a mask on, you're sucking it.
Yeah, you're like, fuck. - And now you gotta put this little man in the mask is like the man breathing, so you only get air. And I'd be in my mask like, I'm getting out of this fucking city. I'm going to Queens. I thought Queens would be an easier job for me. - Westchester, send me to Westchester. - Yeah, anywhere. I'm getting out of this fucking ghetto. - Wow. - Well, you know Tony, thanks so much for your service, man. Yeah, I would love to just have you come back some time and just be able to just go down. Like, there's some other roads I wanna go down and learn more about it. - Yeah, I'd be great. - And just, but yeah, I think today we just got a really good idea of just kind of the brotherhood of, yeah, just what your journey has been like kind of getting involved with fire departmenting. What did your wife end up getting a job, man? - My wife? - Yeah. - She worked for a printer and then she worked for a dentist. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - Like dental assistant kind of stuff. - Oh, she ran the whole, like, you know, yeah, it took the phone call. - Oh yeah. - In all the building. - Keeping everything organized. - Yeah, she ran it. - Yeah, yeah. - And my wife was a hard worker. - Yeah, that's nice. - Like I said, she bought her first car when, you know, we were 17 with our own money. Four grand, she bought a Shavette. Red Shavette. - Oh. Dude, if I saw a girl with a car, yeah, I'm going with her. - Yeah, I was like, wow, this girl's got her own car. Yeah, her own money, you know, mom didn't buy it, you know. - That's my, I think, the number one thing I'm looking for in a spouse is a hard working. - Yeah, 'cause life's hard work. - Yeah, you can't try. You can't do the door lock anymore, right? It's not a roll, you always have to say if the girl don't open, gets in the car and don't open your door, she's out. - Yeah. - So there's all these little tests. But yeah, my wife was a hard worker and a great mother. - Yeah, it's a nice thing too. - Oh, yeah. It was funny, 'cause you know, all them years of being in a fight, a fight, come home sometimes and say, oh my God, I had a fire. Top floor was burning, it is, and I'm out. I'm telling them all this stuff, and then she'll be like, did you remember that we have to go to school tomorrow and I'd be like, I just told you this whole story. It seemed like it went right over your head. - You're like, blah, blah, blah. We get it. - Yeah, you're every pie as you've been to. - Matches. - Go spit that black tar in the sink again. Like you always do. - Oh, yeah, behind every good fire, man, huh? - Oh, yeah, it's the wife's. I got some pictures of the fire department wives. - Well, look, you can show me that. As long as it's appropriate, you can show me that. - I know appropriate, yeah. - Okay, good girls. - Well, you know, a lot of them are Bronx girls. - Well, look, these days, oh, yeah. Tough women over there. - Yes. - That's what you need in the world. You need a good, strong lady. This is your book right here, Tales from the Tiller. - Yes. - I didn't even know you had written this. - Yeah, I wrote this, it just came out in September. - Really? - Yeah, great book. - Congratulations. - Yeah. - A lot of good stories in there and I got recipes in there. - A lot of good news. - Sure. - A clamp sauce casino, I think you might like that. - Well, I'll tell you this, I took a gal out the other night, went to a place they had clams and white wine sauce. - That's kind of like, oh, you would love the clamp sauce casino. - Really? - Well, you know, clams casino. You know, they put the peppers and the onions and a little bacon on it and then they bake them. - No, I've never had that. - Louisiana didn't have clamp sauce casinos. - They might have had it, we had macaroni. - There it is. Oh, yeah, it looks good. - So I make it, this guy that got in trouble and was sent to our firehouse and it was one of his meals and I took it from him and we make it with the spaghetti. So we put it over with the peppers, the bacon, the onions. - God, I want that. - Breadcrumb and the clams. - Oh, I want that. I'm a clam guy. Have you seen that kid that says that? - No. - Bring up that clam kid. I love this kid. But of course, that a fireman's book would have fires with recipes thrown in. - Yeah, so it's funny because some of the stories are like tragedy and then it goes right into the recipe. It's like, it's a little weird, but. - No, no, that kid that does the Italian words. - No, no, I'm looking for that kid. Yeah, this kid's hilarious, but what did I just ask for? - Clamp guy. - Yeah, yeah. I'm a clam guy. Kid, have you seen this little kid? - No, I see. Just kid, they interviewed him. We'll finish on him. - All right. - I'm a guy who basically likes clams, really. I'm a clam guy. - Yeah, I like that kid. - It's all I do. - Oh, he looks like it. - Clams are awesome. This is crazy. - I hate it, or it's this. - I hate the burger. - Kids getting a little bit weird. But yeah, that guy's a clam guy, you know? - It's getting a little weird. - But I could see you guys just like, you guys show up in a fire, but you also brought, like, but you also brought a dinner that has to be preheat. That has to be heated up. So you're like taking it up to the fire when you leave it on the leg. - As soon as you sit down and eat the tonal arm goes off. - Every time, huh? - And what happens is we have a big thing of foil paper. And one guy just starts cutting the foil papers off. And you know, the guy starts wrapping this. - Taking it to go. - Otherwise the cockroaches will walk away. We had so many cockroaches in the firehouse. Oh my God, you can never get rid of them. - Oh, God, yeah. - We'll have to hear about it next time. You have a book, "Tales from the Tiller of the Truth Stories of Hair." - Truth stories of hair was in heartbreaking humor. The luckiest guy alive in his journey. In the FDNY, that's awesome. - Yeah, thoughts with some of my jobs before that. And then right through the academy and right up to the time. - Who helped you put it together? - Just me and my son and my wife, yeah. - Oh, that's excellent. - Yeah, it was all in-house. And my brother-in-law who was in Seattle, he worked for Microsoft, and he did all the proof readings. - Did he? - Funny story is that, you know, he threw his shoulder out, working the mouse doing all my corrections because every chapter had like a thousand corrections on it. - So. - What, that sounds like an insurance scam. - Yeah. - But, that'll be the next book, you know? - Yeah, people are already telling me, when you're going to write another book, I'm like, well, I'm just trying to get this one out now. It's hard, I go on the Instagram, that helps. - And something's always some asshole, you write one book. Is it, when's your next book come out? - Yeah. - He can't even read. It's always people that can't read it. - Yeah, and what's my next one going to be like, more "Tales from the Tiller of the Truth?" - Hey, hey, if it sells. - You never know, man. - I've enjoyed your time today, man. - Thanks for thinking about us, and just kind of taking us on a little bit of a journey. Yeah, we had so many questions for today, so I'd love to be able to get to more of them. - Yeah, I can't believe how fast it went. - Another time, I know. - When you having fun. - Hey. - You're the man. - I'm just glad we're not on fire in here today, man. - I really am. - Checking this lobby out over here, too. It's about a thousand years old over here. - I know, this place is pretty cool, man. - Yeah, it's cool. - If you get to go to this, like a bar over there and a restaurant, just at each end. - I went and I looked at 'em, yeah. - It's just cool. - It's funny, 'cause I've been in like big hotels in Manhattan before and the lobbies are like tremendous. You know what I mean, there's stores and restaurants. So I thought it was gonna be like, "I've never been to the Chelsea." - Yeah, this is a nice place to come. If you just come for a meal or something like, they went to the bar last night. It's nice and narrow, huh? - Yeah. - At least the suite. - Yeah, this is one of the sweetest. But yeah, it just feels like, I don't know. To me, it just feels like a lot more chill here. - Yeah, definitely. - And relax. But thank you for your service. I wanna say that, thank you for coming today and helping to share memories of some of your comrades that have fallen over the years and that have also served. And we appreciate it. And we appreciate your wife and son Dominic, we'll have to put a picture of all of them together at the end of the episode. And thanks again, man. - Thank you. - Yep, we had a good time. - Pleasure, man, in an honor. - Well, appreciate it, Tony. Thank you very much. - Thank you. ♪ Now I'm just falling on the breeze ♪ ♪ And I feel I'm falling like these leaves ♪ ♪ I must be corner stoned ♪ ♪ Oh, but when I reach that ground ♪ ♪ I'll share this piece of mind I found ♪ ♪ I can feel it in my bones ♪ ♪ I thought it's gonna tell you ♪
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Tony Bon Figlio is a retired FDNY firefighter with 21 years of service in Washington Heights and Queens, including firsthand experience during 9/11.
He shared his journey from growing up in New York Park, working in a meatpacking plant, to eventually joining the fire department after being inspired by a neighbor’s advice.
Early in his career, he faced racial and gender discrimination, including being excluded from hiring due to a zero on a physical test and being passed over due to a lawsuit by female firefighters.
His first fire was terrifying and life-changing—though initially a successful extinguishing effort, it was later overshadowed by a tragic incident where a child was found hidden behind a door and ultimately died.
The experience deeply affected him, leading to a profound understanding of the dangers and emotional toll of firefighting.
He reflects on the cultural and social environment of 1970s–80s NYC, including the presence of crime, drug activity, and strong community ties in working-class neighborhoods.
Despite the risks, he found immense fulfillment in the job, describing it as both the scariest and most thrilling experience of his life.
The episode highlights the importance of storytelling in humanizing real-life experiences and the resilience of those who serve in high-risk professions.
Summary:
Tony Bon Figlio, a retired firefighter with 21 years of service in New York City’s FDNY, shares a deeply personal journey from his childhood in New York Park to his career in firefighting. Growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood, he worked in a meatpacking plant, where he encountered harsh conditions, dangerous smells, and a gritty, sometimes corrupt environment involving unregulated practices. A pivotal moment came when he took the fire department exam, only to face exclusion due to gender bias and a zero on a physical test, which was later reversed thanks to a federal lawsuit led by pioneering female firefighters.
His first fire was initially a routine operation, but a later incident involving a child hidden behind a door in a burning apartment left a lasting emotional scar. He recounts the trauma of discovering the child had died, and how the lack of communication from residents—likely due to an SRO (single-room occupancy) arrangement—exposed systemic failures. Despite the hardships, Tony emphasizes the profound sense of purpose, danger, and pride that defined his career.
The story blends personal memory, social history, and the realities of urban firefighting, illustrating how service in high-risk jobs shapes identity, resilience, and empathy. It serves as both a tribute to the bravery of first responders and a reflection on the societal factors that influence public safety.
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Tony Bon Figlio is a retired firefighter and veteran of the FDNY, having served for 21 years in Washington Heights and Queens, including during 9/11.
Before firefighting, Tony worked in a meat processing plant as a cleanup crew member and briefly worked in a plastic molding factory.
Tony took the firefighter test at age 19, passed the written test with a 98, and passed the physical test, though he initially received a zero on a ledge walk that later helped him get hired due to a lawsuit by women firefighters.
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